After months of cloud and flooding rains, followed by 2 months of extreme pollen levels that affected me much more than the average season, finally some clear sky was predicted for last night. Not a whole night mind you, just a couple of hours of partly clear sky.
My mate Phil, @scribbly here on
We got off to a bad start. The tyres on my 18”
Just before writing this report, I ordered two replacement high density flat free polyurethane wheels. No more flat tyres. Expected delivery (1 week)
Phil brought up his Mewlon 180C and G11. Last week, I bought a second-hand bargain-a Stellavue 102ED refractor complete with Feather Touch focuser, Televue 0.8X reducer corrector, Lakeside focus motor and controller interface, plus various custom adaptors, came up for sale, locally, so no freight, all for about USD800. The Televue reducer and Feather Touch Focuser alone cost more than the vendor was asking.
We mounted both instruments side-by-side on Phil’s Losmandy G11.
The views through the two instruments were in no way comparable, rather they were complementary. The Stellavue with a 31mm Nagler gives a nearly 4 degree field, The Mewlon 180C has little over three times that focal length. Nonetheless, the two instruments provided wonderful complementary views, wide fields with the refractor, close ups with the Mewlon. We meandered about the sky comparing and contrasting views through the two instruments of a wide variety of objects. In our haul was, the Orion & Crab Nebulae, Mars, Pleiades, Eskimo nebula, Leo Triplet, Omega Centauri, 47 Tucana,
From the initial potential of only an hour or so of partly cloudy sky, we finished up with about 5 hrs of mostly clear sky with just the occasional wisp of cloud drifting almost imperceptibly across the star-studded sky. Clouds out here are black and you can only spot them by the absence of stars in part of the sky. Seeing varies from poor to short periods of steady. Transparency was probably 8/10.
Joe and Phil