Date: 1st Nov 2008, Saturday
Observation Time: 6:00pm to 7:30pm (1:00 hrs)
Location: MTRP, CA
Weather: 80% cloudy, Sky was in & out
Instruments: New 10” dob & bunch of new eyepieces.
Buddies: Philip and Jack (MTRP Ranger)
Bought a 10" dob last sunday. Orion XT10 intelliscope. I observed jupiter from home, but this was sort of real first session with the dob to test the whole setup and new eyepieces. GSO40mm supeview, Celestron Xcel 10mm and Celestron E-lux 2" 25mm.
Scope wasn't fully collimated. Still not fully comfortable with optics.. Really need laser collimator.
Weather wasn;t friendly either today. Too much cloudy. I think because of clouds, though transparency was bad, the seeing was excellent. So planetary observation was excellent.
Venus phase (New): Venus was best view ever for me.. This is first time I ever saw phase of Venus. I guess the phase was around 70% waxing. Confirm it. (?? Confirmed from heavens-above). With 10mm xcel eyepiece, 120x showed me the phase clearly and luckily, 2x barlow on it, 240x magnification was still in focus. It was fabulous. Orangish-Red color on top-left (NW) edge of venus, while the bottom-right (SE) edge was lil bit greenish. I remember Jon told me abt colors last time.. but I forgot.. Need to read more (??)
Moon: Moon was fine.. the clarity and shaprness of craters was clearly visible. Didn't spend much time in detailed observation.
Tried Jon's GSO 40mm Superview eyepiece. Though i have cleaned the eyepiece, its inner surface is still really dirty. (??)..
Jupiter: With 25mm eyepiece, 48x, Jupiter bands were visible. With 10mm xcel, 120x, it was pretty sharp image. didn't see any other details.
Compared the eyepiece field of view with the Jon's 9mm expanse eyepiece. With Jupiter's moons I was able to get judgment. Indeed expanse had more field of view..probably 7-10 deg more. but i felt that image contrast in xcel was better than expanse.. Need to confirm (??)
Tested the R&P focuser on Jupiter sharpness. focuser is ill bit tight. After using Crayford, use of R&P is indeed undesirable.. the view shakes lil bit while focusing. Need to loose the focuser lil bit. Still.. focuser did excellent job to get the sharp view. Didn't feel like I am compromising on the view...
Alignment and Object locator testing : Spent some time with the "intelliscope".. Two star alignment.. Pointed to Vega. Wasn't able to get a star 60deg away from Vega.. so pointed to Altair.. warp factor was +1.1.. for first shot not bad.. but still should have done better.. but didn't spend much itme becasue of cloud cover rolling in.
Used the intelliscope, to confirm location of Deneb. It was within +/- 1-2deg error margin.
To locate all other objects, used intelliscope.
Alberio: In 25mm view, though not in center. Image was not that great.. yellow-orangish and white-bluish star pair visible. wasn;t the greatest view.
Double Double: Its a good test for eyes, collimation and eyepiece. Again wasn't the greatest view. I think scope wasn;t fully collimated, so was lil bit hard to see the resolving at 10mm eyepiece, 120x.. It should have been perfect at this magnification. but i got the perfect view, at one particular focus.
Again, R&P focus is lil bit tight to handle.
M57 Ring: Pointed to M57 and then checked intelliscope co-ords. In 9mm eyepiece, 135x not the greatest view. Star at2pm missing.. fuzzy ring was visible, but image wasn't sharp. but in 10mm image was great. Star at 2pm visible. I am not sure if transperency got improved within 2mins or not... but image was bright and ring was indeed better than 9mm. Still need to confirm this contrasting aspect in eyepiece comparison.
M31 Andromeda: found out that intelliscope really helps.. It was hard for me to see any reference stars in the clouds... but intelliscope helped...I am too glad that I have it.. worth the money... M31 not the greatest view... clouds to blame. With GSO 40mm widefield.. M32 was lil bit hard, but somehow M110 was visible. Isn't that lil bit contradicting.. any way becasue clouds, didn't think much.
M11 wild duck cluster: Intelliscope for rescue.. but not right on target.. Really hard to see in the finder. I got it once.. bad view..
In 40mm, tried to focus, but felt than focuser tube length is not enough for such a low magnification (30x)... Need to verify the relationship between maximum focuser length and min magnification supported (??)... again i might be wrong.. Need to go to dark sight for perfect focus.
Overall, to summarize..
Intelliscope is indeed a great addition for me.. surely help me in verifying locations and in bad weather. Need to learn better tactics to get warp factor below 0.5
Xcel 10mm eyepiece is probably great addition, if my perception abt image contrast is correct.. though field of view is smaller than 9mm, still image details matter
Not much happy with GSO 40mm superview...again.. weather might be the factor here.. Need to check Orion nebula or Lagoon-Triffid combo in this.
The 2" type of 25mm eyepiece...not sure if it is great or not.. lil bit of pain while swapping eyepieces, because of 2"-.1.25" adapter. Still will check in next few observations..
Indeed glad with the whole scope.. images were good as expected.. during collimation, realized there are coule of spots/scratches at the center of primary mirror. Need to confirm from Jon, if any drawbacks.. Precise collimation is necessary (double-double is the proof)..
Telerad is must... Finding Vega was difficult as hell :) .. It wasn't clouds..it wasn't location either.. but it was me.. and i call myself starhopper ;-D
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