Voyager 3

Why "not" OO ? Bad customer service?

4 hours ago, Stu said:

After the wind and rain which has been around for much of the day, the last thing I expected tonight were clear skies. However, it looked promising as darkness fell, and having checked SkySafari, I fancied a decent look at Syrtis Major which was well placed.

It was still a bit windy for the spindly 8” f8, so out came the Heritage 150p on the Ercole/Gitzo combination, becoming my grab and go of choice these days. 24mm Panoptic as a finder and 2 to 4 Nag zoom for higher power. I was very pleased with the views, as I’ve not caught Syrtis Major so far this apparition. Fine focusing is a bit of an art with the plastic helical focuser but with patience it is quite possible to achieve. The Southern polar cap was visible, Syrtis Major and mentioned, Hellas Planitia above it (newt view) and then a distinct split in the dark markings towards the other limb. All in all a very good view.

Popping over to the Moon was just as rewarding, and tonight Mare Crisium looked fantastic on the limb, but it was Petavius which really caught my eye. Lovely fine detail in an around it, I spent quite some time viewing it.

I then decided I wanted a refractor view to compare it with, so out came the Vixen FL102S, with Baader Zeiss Prism and the 3 to 6 Nag zoom. The comparisons are quite interesting! On the Moon I would say the Heritage won, much as it grieves me to say that. It was brighter and showed the fine features just that bit better. I guess that should be expected due to the additional resolution. Actually using the refractor is a more pleasant experience, focusing in particular is much easier to achieve due to the dual speed Moonlight.

Mars was a reversal in most aspects. Contrast against the sky much better due to the unobstructed optics, as you would expect, and the detail just that bit more crisp. The exception was a split feature (shown in John’s excellent sketch in his report tonight in this section), which showed up better in the Newt than the refractor.

A couple of doubles showed the refractor benefits again just to make me feel better (😉), the double double splitting easily despite being low down vs a struggle in the Heritage due to its scruffier star images.

All in all a great session, all packed up now. Amazing how this little newt performs for the money, but equally nice to spend time with the refractor and to catch an aspect of Mars I’ve not seen for a while. Could have observed for much longer but an early start awaits me in the morning.

I'm late to the party stu but what is the FL of your Vixen ? 

On 22/10/2020 at 01:41, Louis D said:

28mm RKE in a field flattened AT72ED at f/6 compared to some others in my collection:

How many lenses does the Meade HD uses ? And how many does the APM uses ? The APM , pan , aspheric are quite different in brightness compared to the Meade HD etc . I think it will not cause a difference in night time viewing...

It is a mirror 😉