[Chaos-l] Farrington report

[Mark Lerch]

I'd imagine you'd want to collimate pretty well for that


-----Original Message-----
From: chaos-l-bounces at rtpnet.org [mailto:chaos-l-bounces at rtpnet.org] On Behalf Of Robert Nielsen
Sent: Friday, March 20, 2009 3:25 PM
To: Chapel Hill Astronomical Observation Society
Subject: Re: [Chaos-l] Farrington report

I think in my Mewlon, using a triple barlow (5X + 4X + 2.5X) with a 5mm 
eyepiece would be ...

Wait ... how do you calculate that?   My scope's focal length is 3572mm 
... and the 5mm eyepiece would give 714.4 X.   Do you start multiplying?

Is it really 714.4 * 5 * 4 * 2.5?   Whoa ... isn't that 35720 X?!!?!!   
35 THOUSAND power?!!?!! That's like a single photon wandering around in 
your eyeball!

Robert

Mark South 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 
> <mailto: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 
>> <mailto: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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