The equipment that accompanied me was all new-to-me equipment. I have previously posted images of my Meade tripod, my Celestron SLT Mount, and the Bresser AR102S refractor (really a "reflactor" as it has a mirror in the aft end), this was their first true first light. So, for this post, I'll briefly cover what I saw, the performance of the AR102S and my new way of transporting Astro gear for air travel.
I traveled 3 miles from Teton Village up into Teton National Park to get away from the resort lighting so I could have truly dark skies. Both nights had an
The observing location:
- M31 - using the 32mm (giving 14X) - The entire galaxy fit in the
FOV . Both M32 and M110 were easily visible as were two dust lanes. This is by far one of the best visual presentations of M31 I've seen in a long time.
- M33 - using the 20mm (giving 23X) - This galaxy was easily visible and even had structure, once again, one of the best views visually in quite a while.
- C14 (Double Cluster) - using 20mm - It was well defined with star color very evident.
NGC 7479 - w/ 20 & 15mm - Initially, I could not find it to see it. Finally, after 30 minutes of verifying my position, I caught a very dim glimpse of a wisp of grey!
- M13 - w/10mm (giving 46X) - It had structure but I was unable to resolve it to the center. I tried barlowing the 15mm (giving me 61X) but the center still remained unresolved.
- M27 - 15mm (giving 31X) - Easily defined and with a great starfield behind.
- M57 - 10mm - It was quite small and I could barely tell it was a donut. This tiny 1.5 by 1.0 arc minute object is probably as small as you'd ever want to go with this scope.
- M15 - 10mm - Small and compact, could not resolve the center.
- M11 - 10mm - It seemed usually small to me but the structure (flying V) was still evident.
- M101 - 15mm - Surprising to me, it was easily visible with the tiniest hint of structure visible. One of the best views seen in a while.
- M8 - 15mm - Nebulosity visible as was the "lagoon" structure.
- M20 - 15mm - Nebulosity was visible, but just barely
- M16 - 15mm - Only the star cluster was visible, the Eagle structure was not evident
- M17 - 15mm - Nebulosity was visile as was the shape.
- M45 - 32mm - It all fit into the
FOV , some nebulosity was evident but the big surprise was how littleCA color was evident - I expected a lot more.
NGC 253 - 20 & 15mm - This bright edge-on galaxy was easily defined
When I first got this reflactor several months ago the image was not correct, the brighter stars displayed as pinched diamonds in the eyepiece. I could never get the focus to bring them to a point and I could never get a diffraction pattern.
Stars now focus to a point, although I still can't see a diffraction pattern. I'm wondering if this has to do with the short focal length? The background is dark enough (considering the
All-in-all this is a very nice grab-and-go scope.
For me, one of the funnest/coolest things about this trip was how I packed all my gear for air travel. On previous trips with my gear, I was never really satisfied that my check baggage would protect my gear. I was looking for a different way to protect things for this trip. Serendipity is sometimes an amusing thing, my golf clubs were out because I was contemplating taking them on this trip. My golf clubs travel in a hard shell golf club case. I looked at that and said my golf clubs are not going on this trip because my telescope is going in that case. It worked like a charm, everything fit and then some, there was even room for my camera tripod and 10X50 binos. Everything came out perfectly unscathed both at the destination and then back home. As an interesting note, I was told by my father-in-law that I really should put a golf club in the golf case so that I could claim that it really was golf clubs that were in there to prevent the airline from charging me additional money because it would have been seen maybe as "special baggage." I even got them to put a fragile sticker on the outside of the case because they were "antique" clubs.
So it was a great trip, all the gear traveled well with no damage, the skies were perfect, and it was a memorable experience. I hope you have enjoyed this lengthy right up and hopefully it provides some use for you.
As you all know, it didn't happen if don't have pictures - so here are the rest: This is what had to go into the case A moving blanket was the basis for the padding The
Cheers,
JT