Well, I checked the weather forecast at work this afternoon and saw it was clear so I decided to setup the telescope again when I got home.
I’d dug my Skywatcher 102mm Refractor out of the cupboard last week, and my batteries for the RDFs arrived earlier this week, so I was good to go for a change.
I started off with the Baader Hyperion Zoom again, just to give it another chance, and I am glad to say that things were definitely better this time. I was pleased to be able to find objects with the longer focal length settings and then zoom in to pick out more detail. I did have to refocus more than I was expecting to when zooming in, but it didn’t seem to be too much of an issue. I’m still not overly bowled over by the narrowness of the longer focal lengths, and this time I definitely picked up some “fuzziness” in the outer edge of the field of view – she’s a keeper for the time being.
After taking the Zoom out of the telescope, I found myself using my Nagler T4 12mm eyepiece for most of the remainder of the session with considerable success. First up was M13 in Hercules which I managed to make a few notes on and complete a half decent sketch of – I’ll try to get the sketch up here once I find the cable for my scanner.
I then tried, without success, to locate M57 and M27 for a while. I think it was still a little too bright, and the light pollution from where I observe in my backyard is pretty bad so I wasn’t able to see anything of these two objects. I think I’ll leave these until I can get my Dob setup and the focuser / collimation sorted.
While messing around in the South trying to find M57 and M27 I noticed a very bright “Star” low down, just about to disappear behind the tree near my house. Memories flooded back as this was wear Jupiter was the first time I had ever observed it – and low and behold – there she was again! I spent some time on Jupiter, and even pushed the magnification up with my 4mm Ortho eyepiece, and was able to make out dark bands and saw 4 moons.
Had scan round the Northern skies but didn’t find anything and then decided to call it a night at around 22:15. All in all, a good session, although I had forgotten just how bright the skies were and this made it quite difficult to get dark adapted and then find and see things. It’s a shame I cannot drive so I could go to a dark site once in a while.
Tags: Amateur, Astronomy Links, Environment, Eyepiece, Field of view, Jupiter, Light pollution, Magnification