Location: home,
Equipment:
Had a chance to do a field test of my early Christmas present -
I am happy to report that the insulation seems to work. Mak was able to handle high powers immediately after deployment.
19:00. Saturn
I have started with the planets. Overall, this year was disappointing for Saturn. However, this time the view with Mak was surprisingly good. I was able to take it to 386x with TV Delite 7mm. The view was soft but Cassini division and multiple bands on the glob were resolved. SV102ED at 238x with TV Delite 3mm delivered smaller and sharper view but with less details on the globe.
Jupiter
I did a brief star test on Polaris. In the outward defocused image, the central obstruction shadow was slightly up off center, and slightly below center in the inward defocused image. Unfortunately, the seeing was too bad to resolve airy disks. Next day I have looked for
20:00. Asteroids
It has been a while since I have caught any asteroids and quite few new moved into view. All observed with
There were a few others within the reach of 7” scope. Unfortunately, Auriga and Taurus harboring those have not cleared the large ash tree north-east from my observing spot.
Orion doubles
20:45. I decided to split a few doubles. Orion was in a nice clear spot; I was typing the first double into SkySafari when my mount went offline. Apparently, it has run out of battery juice. I may need to replace it. Luckily, my son got a large power cord wheel this summer. I grabbed it from the garage and run the cord from the house to the observing spot. The mount went back online and after alignment and connecting it to the SkySafari on my phone we were back in business!
21:15.
STF 597 – 8.8, 12.2, 30.4”, white, silver. Secondary was a sharp dot in
HJ 684 – 8.6, 10.3, 9.6, 12.5, 9.6, ab24.8”, ac46.4”, cd11.9”, ae78.1”, A, B, C and E – white, D – silver.
STTA 55 – 8.2, 9.2, 37.4”, pale orange, bluish. Nice colors in both scopes.
H 6 83 – 7.2, 10.1, 95.3”, white, silver. Nice sharp views in both scopes.
STF 605 – 10.9, 10.9, 11.6”, silver pair. Brighter and sharper view in
STF 609 – 8.8, 9.1, 2.9”, yellow pair. Tight clean split in both scopes.
STF 612 – 8.3, 8.4, 13.3, ab16.1”, ac59.8”. AB – orange pair –
Overall, I really like the optical performance of the