theropod

Yes, marked improvement.

Huge snowflakes are mixing with light rain. The rain is slowly changing over to the white stuff. It will be dark in less than an hour. About 4” is expected on the ground by dawn. Had my gear ready, batteries charged and such. Oh well, summer night Persids will be back.

In a similar vien. Last Thursday I focused on M-42 with my C-90 Mak for the first time after owning the scope for four years. A combination of my 2X Barlow and 12mm EP pointed/mounted on the new Skywatcher mount. I was flat out blown away. Dust lanes, and that cluster of blue stars at its heart, fairly jumped out of the EP. I didn’t know the little scope could do this well, but conditions were near perfect.

Don’t anchor your focus on any particular part of the sky, or don’t limit yourself to just one part of the sky. Build a barn door tracker, or buy one of the commercial trackers for long exposures. if you have live view, and can see a meteor on screen, end the shot immediately. relax and keep your camera company. Nothing beats catching a meteor you watched fall.

Very nice picts!

Great topic and well addressed.

Upstate:Last night was no good at all. That disgusting C-90 Mak finder I worked on let me down, pointing a dozen degrees off, which screwed up stellar alignment big time. By the time I had things half right I was cold and tired. Beginning to think my little narrow FOV Mak might not be the scope for this.

I’g only seen one string of 21 such eyesores, but with time it will become the norm instead of the exception, sadly. My string were all spaced very evenly apart.

The finder scope, and mounting system, included with the C-90 Mak is a sad little joke. I’m in the market for a good reliable replacement at this moment. Doing the stellar alignment for my goto with what was sent in the package is a study in frustration. I just packed up for the night because even after modifying the finder system it’s still a mile off, and makes that 2-3 star alignment a royal pain. The C-90’s narrow FOV doesn’t help here. I need a wide angle low mag crosshair eyepiece instead of the 12 mm version I have. Oh well, back to the drawing board and daylight fixes for night time problems.

Point your kit at the sword of Orion one of these mornings...

New Mexico is a under-appreciated treasure. Up in the northeast corner of the state are some of the darkest regions in North America. Clayton Lake state park is only about 30ish air miles from Black Mesa, OK, and the skies are so dark there it’s almost frightening. As a bonus there is a vivid dinosaur trackway exposed at the spillway for the lake with a few theropod tracks scattered among the many hadrosaur tracks, which isn’t a common thing. I’ve been to the state park several times and might just make a road trip to the region next spring. I ought to have operating my EQ goto all figured out by then. Maybe...

My wife and I watched two episodes last night, and while interesting the level of conjecture rises into low orbit.

If one counts the worthless tripod Celestron includes with the scope, then yes. I saved my allowance for 2 years to buy my Skywatcher EQM 35 Pro EQ (all the while yearning for the iOptron CEM 25P which have become hen teeth in the Rona era). I wouldn’t expect to get a very good scope, and or mount, for under $200.

The Celestron C-90 Mak can be had for $200, and is a wonderful little scope. I absolutely love mine.

I drilled and tapped the front ring on my C-90’s finder to eliminate that stupid O ring, and it was super easy. More importantly, to me, the finder now centers exactly where the OTA is looking/pointing, and does not wiggle at all. I did this to make my 2/3 star alignment easier. Even with a double crosshair eyepiece it sure helps to be able to get close using the finder. As issued by Celestron the finder on the C-90 is an absolute joke, and the penny pinchers in corporate surely don’t give a ****. One would think producing the best product possible would take precedent over saving $.50. I seriously doubt that installing those 3 little screws would add even that measily $.50 to the overall cost of production, and I would have paid several dollars more to have a finder that actually works. With modern machining technology, and tooling, adding those 3 little screws would be a snap. It only took me 10 minutes to do the job by hand, and a CNC could make that happen in far far less time.

What good work done here! I’m now inspired to build my own little star shack. If for no other reason than to avoid polar/stellar alignment each and every time I want to use my new eq goto. The ROR set on the ridged rails is so smart. I wonder if a modified garage door opening mechanism could be used to move the roof. Here in Arkansas rain storms can pop up in a matter of minutes, and having a push button powered retraction system seems to make sense.

Stunning images right there!

Blue dust for everyone! Very Nice image. I showed these jewels to my wife and neighbor a few nights back, and they were wowed by my little C-90 Mak’s view of the cluster. Of course the dust lanes weren’t shining like in your picture, but I enjoy looking each and every time. It was also nice to have my new mount slew right to targets. I’m hoping to get s few decent shots by this time next year, and this is a target I can fit in the narrow FOV my scope returns, as opposed to Andromeda that doesn’t at all. I have a diy refractor built using a 60mm objective from a trashed binocular set, and after eliminating the prism stack it does better than one would expect. It outdoes the C-90 on some targets, like the great nebula in Orion. At less than a pound that diy scope is fun. No finder needed. Just look over the top of the tube and expect to be pretty close. Thinking of an”peep” type sight for it.

Very nice!

While my wife and I live in a remote place, and have no neighbors within miles, we did “experiment” with living in the Willamette valley of western Oregon for 8 months. Sky gazing west of the Cascade range is almost pointless. Off to the east of that valley, deep in the desert, are some of the most pristine skies I have ever seen. Having to drive 120 miles one way to get to one of those sites wasn’t appealing. My current issue is the humidity load in the air that changes over less than an hour from not-too-bad seeing to this-is-a-waste-of-time. It can, and does, shift like this several times during the night. I blame our proximity to the Gulf of Mexico plain where we live. Pulses of warm ocean air often ride along high above, and the sky quivers. Even when it’s dry down here on ground level doesn’t mean it is 9,000 feet up, or higher. Still, I’m lucky and I know it.

Super!

My 12.5 mm double crosshair illuminating eyepiece arrived today! Cloudy as can be, but it’s supposed to be clear Wednesday (figers crossed), but markedly cooler. I’m so excited. I’m doing a firm 3 star alignment and test the mount and my little scope.

I made good on my promise to myself to fix the poor design in the supplied finder scope aiming with the Celestron C-90 Mak. The scope is acceptable for my current needs, but I’m not married to it. My solution was to carefully copy the location of the existing adjuster holes, use my Exacto to spin a pilot point, drill and tap these fresh holes for the socket head screws seen in the forward ring. No drill press, a small variable speed drill held steady on my lap with the ring/mount in my left hand. The tap was held in place a pair of linesman pliers, carefully. I again held the pliers/tap steady on my lap with the ring/mount assembly in my left, which I turned into the tap by hand. This injection molded part drilled, and took threads, well. An O ring was supposed to, somehow, do what these new screws are doing. What these new screws are doing should be obvious. Now a double crosshair OTA EP with illuminating reticle will get me those 2-3 star alignments with far less hunting. The brand new tooling, cleaning the chips and working as slowly as possible gave me some clean strong threads. I think one of the factory screw mounts is out of square (one right back as shown). I readjusted the reticle and it only took a few minutes. I purposely thumped the eyepiece end, and objective end, like flicking a bug away, and the crosshairs stayed dead on that pine tree miles away. What this has to do with the new mount is my post Polaris stellar alignment, and the 1-2-3 star tuning required o get the mount down to business. If I’m gonna look for the faint fuzzies with a small scope I better be pointing at the right place. Compound a narrow FOV with that, and pointing just a bit off isn’t fun. So, I needed to be able to use a finder scope that actually finds something, consistently. Total spent to add the new screws? $6.50, tooling and all. Time spent crafting and realignment with OTA? 20 minutes. Value added to the process? Priceless! (Sorry, I already have my hat)...

Down the road all that may happen, bottletopbury. For now I’m going back to the supplied finder that cam with the C-90. I am, however going to modify/hack it to actually work, and the little O ring inside the rearmost ring is going bye bye. I am going to drill and tap the rearmost scope ring so the finder is supported and adjusted on both front and back rings. That O ring only compresses so much, and changes flexibility with temperature. If needed I will build up/shave down the dovetail in addition to the new screws. The optics, and coarse reticle, of the finder are acceptable, it’s just the mounting system for this little scope is insane. Simply copying the forward screw locations should make the finder actually usable. Before I try serious picts, guiding and all the other fun stuff I need to get the fundamentals down. I’ve got to use a finder that actually works during 1,2 or 3 star alignment because of the narrow FOV even with my 32mm EP with my little Mak. A nice illuminating reticle EP for said Mak to assist in this procedure is at the top of the list of goodies I need. A fixed income means I have to parcel out my “improvements”. For some reason it was very satisfying to tap “home” and have the scope park with Polaris dead center of the EP. It was like rolling in a birdie putt to close a round.