[Chaos-l] Farrington report

[walter fowler]

I like it! Let fit everything together and see how high we can get.  The
sky's the limit for astronomers.  I keep checking the e-mail looking for
poor Michael's response.  I was KIDDING!  Walter

On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 10:28 AM, Mark South <md_south at mac.com> wrote:

>  I'll put out a triple-barlow challlenge (3081x) next weekend!
> Oops I forgot there are limits...
> Sent from my cell
>
> On Mar 20, 2009, at 9:44 AM, walter fowler <walterfowler at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  What might not have come through in Michael's observing report is how
> much he got into the 5x Powermate and high mag observing.  I swear I heard
> him say under his breath "Why look at anything at less than 500x."  I had to
> pry the Powermate out of his hand when it was time for me to leave.  Ah, the
> lure of big aperture and high magnification ...    Walter
>
> 2009/3/19 Michael Hrivnak <mhrivnak at hrivnak.org>
>
>>  Tonight was a good evening for observing. Walter Fowler and I were the
>> only attendees.
>>
>> Walter had a new GOTO mount to try with his televue refractor. We worked
>> out some kinks and figured out how to get it working. Once the mount stopped
>> "locating" objects in the mud and conceded that they were in the sky, it was
>> quite a lot of fun to use. It will make an ideal public-observing-session
>> setup.
>>
>> Walter had another new toy: at WSP he picked up a used Televue Powermate
>> 5X barlow. You heard me. That's 5, as in five. After I initially dismissed
>> it as pure silliness, he talked me into trying it on Saturn with my scope. I
>> dropped in my Pentax 10mm eyepiece, which put the magnification at a
>> whopping 1027x! When you could get Saturn into the field of view, it was
>> huge! All 5 visible moons were on the same side of the planet, and stretched
>> nearly across the entire field of view. Despite the crapshoots that were
>> focusing and aiming the scope, during brief moments as Saturn zipped across
>> the field of view, there was a lot of detail. I saw the shadow of the rings
>> on the planet surface and even saw empty space through the rings on either
>> side of the planet.
>>
>> I did a side-by-side comparison of my Pentax 10XW with Walter's Nagler 9.
>> They show nearly identical fields of view, but the presentation is
>> different. Despite more magnification, the Nagler actually caused objects to
>> look smaller. The field of view, however, extended all around in typical
>> Nagler form.
>>
>> As for objects, I mostly cruised through the highlights of my last
>> observing session. Early on, we spotted the remains of the Cosmos 1939
>> Rocket moving through Cancer at about 3.6 magnitude. The air was quite
>> still, and I found lots of detail in some great objects while the dryness
>> lasted. Walter left around 10:20pm. By 10:45, I noticed that the sky was
>> glowing more than usual, and everything was very wet. A quick check with my
>> iPhone revealed that the humidity in Pittsboro was 90% and rising! That's
>> way above the forecast, which is a shame. I packed up at that point and
>> headed home.
>>
>> Michael
>>
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