[Chaos-l] Finally a cloudless and moonless night!

[Mark South]

Matt,
I share that same excitement of stargazing!   I'm glad you were able  
to get out there with some great aperture and see some great targets  
such as M3 and M13.    Looking forward to getting out there  
soon...seems like a long time.
Mark
On Jun 14, 2009, at 10:44 AM, Matt Lochansky wrote:

> Believe it or not - Friday night was my first opportunity to use my
> new 10" dob on a moonless night.  I know you all have probably been
> equally frustrated recently!  Not that I mind the rain - but we've had
> clouds more nights than not the past couple months.  Oh, and I was out
> of town just after last month's full moon.  There were clouds (and
> flashes of lightning) in the distance, but the area over my house was
> clear and dark, so I got the scope out and got right into it!
>
> So, keep in mind my experience has been limited to a 90mm
> Maksutov-Cassegrain... So going to a 10 inch aperture is a pretty
> radical difference.  Things many of you have seen for years are
> completely new experiences for me - I'm going to enjoy it while I can!
> I took the advice from the last email and got myself a TelRad.  these
> things should come as standard issue on a big scope.  Very easy to
> install and use - works great.  Only complaint is that is fogs up very
> easily - but can be wiped dry.  My wife got my a copy of "Pocket Sky
> Atlas" from Sky and Telescope which I'm using to improve my minimal
> star hopping ability.  I would recommend this guide - it shows stars
> to mag 7.6.  Also bought some used eyepieces which are a lot nicer
> than the Plossls I had (thanks John).  I have the "intelliscope" on my
> dob, but still not having luck getting it to hold it's calibration -
> I'll call up Orion and get some help on that one.
>
> So, I set out on Friday to look at globular star clusters...  But had
> to get a view of Saturn first (partly to test out the intelliscope
> calibration).  Perhaps it was my imagination, but the angle of the
> rings seems to have changed enough where you could see a small gap
> between the rings around the far side of the planet from the front.
> As for the globs - I was used to seeing these as very faint fuzzy
> greenish blobs - completely unresolved.  So, I started with M3.  I was
> amazed at the detail, especially once I pushed the magnification up to
> 133 or 200X.  I have to say it looked BETTER than the general images
> I've found on websites.  The color and contrast was very beautiful.  I
> went on to M13 - absolutely stunning.  Definitely bigger and more
> resolved stars than M3.. and the core was brighter.  I thought M3 was
> easier to find, though.  I then went a little more difficult looking
> for M10 and M12 - And even though they are close together, I was only
> able to find one of them.  I'm sure I was missing something obvious.
> I was getting tired of star hopping, so I hit up a few doubles - car
> caroli and mizar.
>
> It had now been about 2 hours and the humidity had gotten to me.  I
> certainly enjoyed my evening - and definitely felt appreciative of the
> larger aperture!    Even just having a better finderscope led me to
> catch more shooting stars and satellites.
>
> Saturday I had the scope out - and allowed my 4 year old to stay up...
> And as the sun set, a big cloud seemed to come out of nowhere and
> settle right over my house, ruining any chance of  skywatching.  At
> least it only takes about 5 minutes to move the scope to the backyard
> and have it set up for skywatching!
>
> -Matt
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