gliderpilot

I thoroughly enjoy sketching at the eyepiece when observing. Not only does taking the time to make a sketch encourage the observation of finer details, it serves as an excellent record of one's observations and is of greater use than a textual description. As the recent poor weather continues, I have been going through some recent observations and picked out some highlights below. I well remember recently working my way through the Herschel 400 open clusters in Cassiopeia. As I moved towards M103, I found that I could just fit 4 lovely clusters, each with their own characteristics, into one field of view. The resulting sketch took several hours over a couple of nights to complete and is well worth the additional effort even though it slowed my progress through my observing list. NGC 891 was my nemesis object. I read in awe of people who were picking this out in small scopes and yet I could not see it through my 8.5" newtonian. Yet, after my umpteenth time of searching I finally managed to get it, right at the limit of vision. Now, with some experience I can almost observe it when the conditions allow. Now, if only I could get that dust lane as well!! Finally, I now regularly notice the bright star forming region NGC 604 in the galaxy M33 for example but up until a few years ago, I didn’t even know it was there. I first found this exciting object by observing M33 for an hour. Whilst I could say that I did pick up hints of the spiral arms, it was while making the sketch that I noticed a small, fuzzy patch of nebulosity embedded within the glow of the galaxy. After digging around in various references, I realised that I had made an independent discovery of NGC604, a large star forming region larger than the Orion Nebula and even the Tarantula Nebula, albeit 200 years to claim any rights! I have put some more information to describe my approach to sketching on my website if you are interested.

It sounds like we are all singing from the same hymn sheet - and thank you for your kind comments. To answer your question, Pingster: I bought two second hand 19mm TV Panoptics. They are lovely and sharp, no sign of coma at all. I also have a pair of 20mm WO wide angle EPs that came with a WO binoviewer. There actually is not much performance difference between them unless one is very fussy (which I have slowly become). The WO eps are very much the better value for money and the panoptics have that small but measureable increase in quality. Michael: your point about the chair is entirely valid. I do find, however, a distinct pleasure in making the eps came to meet me rather than having to go down to meet the eyepiece. Almost like a roll reversal kind of thing! With reference to the Hyperions, I find that I cant get my nose between the 2" barrels hence I have had to go down the 1.25" route. I guess I have smaller inter-pupillary distance (and a big nose!). Clear skies and happy p'gram observing. Mark

As the poor weather and short nights are limiting my observing projects, I have been busy finishing a heavy duty aluminium and stainless steel parallelogram mount for my large 100mm APM binoculars. Here is a summary description of its build: http://refreshingvie...rammount.htm�.� It has been derived from a wooden version that I built last summer. I plan to give away the wooden model to a fellow SPOG astronomer who wants to do some bino observing while his camera is capturing photons on the scope. The parallelogram mount is an extremely comfortable to observe the night sky – the eyepieces really do seem to float in front of your eyes. If you are observing at the zenith, simply push the binos higher or if you are looking at the horizon, simply lower them down. This really does make a refreshing change from my Newtonian where the eyepiece remains where it wants to and I have to crick my neck down to meet it!! I have yet to use it for serious astronomy as the awful weather and long summer days are getting in the way. That being said, I have managed a few sessions at dusk scanning the brighter stars against a blue sky before it gets properly dark. To put the mount through its paces, I have had great fun tracking numerous airliners and high flying birds. The mount moves with ease across the sky with wonderfully smooth and controlled motions in pan and tilt at all altitudes. It is quite something to see high altitude airliners in detail from the ground as they slowly cross the sky! This mount is clearly going to be a pleasure to use once the observing season starts up again. This setup is definitely a keeper and will be used my observatory and under the dark skies of Salisbury Plain.