3/9/07 Report - First light for C100 and 8-24mm zoom

[Andrew*]

Heh-heh-heh-HEEEYY!! He's out with his new APO on the 3rd night of owning it!! How about that?

It's true! Skies were looking good from 9 so I got the car packed up to go out to my dark sky site.

I was out there by around 10pm and set up pretty quickly. The moon was just rising and causing a lot of milkiness all over. The Milky way was nevertheless apparent overhead.

Once I'd set up the telescope and put on the camera up for a long exposure, I swung round to Mizar, of all things. This was mainly due to being inspired to see its companion as described recently by Astroman, and also simply to test the scope, the eyepiece, and the conditions. Centering Mizar at 24mm and zooming in, I had to re-focus slightly from 24mm to 20mm and also from 12mm to 8mm. The scope splitted Mizar from zeta Um no problems. Seeing was apparently around 6/10.

Then I checked out an orange star onwards from the big dipper handle. No, it wasn't mars. Just found out it was Arcturus. VERY twinkly and colourful when unfocused

M31 was difficult to locate due to moon-milk in that area, but once in the EP showed vague elongation. Neodymium filter mopped up the milk a bit, but only a very little more detail was apparent. I tried to move from 24mm up to 20mm, but the image was duller.

Finally the time came to view :moon:. Okay, what's the superlative of contrasty?? Well it was that! :shock: Craters as sharp as knife edges. The terminator was a gold-mine of detail. Image attempts went totally wrong. This is where I discovered the major downfall of the zoom. It's a can of kidney beans! Unless you're bang on center of the exit pupil, it's all black. Trying to frame the moon was very difficult indeed and I couldn't concentrate on getting a clear image, so nothing to show tonight No battery life didn't help the situation

In fact the moon told me a lot tonight:

- Seeing nearer the horizon brought to mind Jordan and washing machines

- don't always blame transparency on LP (LP is pretty good from that site, although there are houses nearby)

- The zoom EP kidney beans. For some reason this was much more annoying when viewing the moon, maybe because of the brightness

- The APO gives a lot of contrast. There was no false colour to be seen.

- my polar alignment left something to be desired...

- Luna's a beautiful place

I had a go using my finderscope with both eyes open to find M27. I knew where it was relative to stars, but not through the finderscope. This took a while to get into, but when I checked the EP, it was in the field at 24mm.

M27 showed a large roundish blob. There were 2 darker streaks radiating from the middle. UHC-S filter significantly darkened the overall image, but a bit more detail was visible. moving from 24mm to 20mm again dulled the image noticably. Interestingly, as M27 was further from the moon than M31, it showed more contrast.

And then it was getting cold, and late, and the moon milk was getting too bright so that ended the night.

Now that the moon was higher I re-checked the seeing and sure enough it had settled down a lot.

In summary:

C100 EDR - lots of contrast. no false colour. Much easier to set up/use than newt. focuser is fine, but mucks up your fingers.

CG5 - big legs! sturdy with the 100mm - vibrations dampened in seconds. slo-mo knobs more difficult to find, but give you more control than cables

Baader Hyperion 8-24mm zoom EP - very sharp across most of the FOV at all focal lengths; brightest at 24mm; not totally parfocal, but near enough; fairly severe kidney-beaning; comfy eye relief; unscrews near the focuser end, so you have to grip both parts of the EP to zoom

Home at midnight. Unpacked the car. Had hot chocolate. Wrote up report. Went to bed. Turned off computer. :sleepy2:

tired and cold but happy!

Andrew

[Albireo380]

Hey Andrew,

Good report. You are getting to grips with your new kit. You were lucky that you didn't have wall to wall cloud for 3 weeks after getting an Apo. Ending the night "tired but happy" is perfect - means yoiu had a ball.

Clear down here in Glasgow at the moment - Illuminated reticule EP arrived today, so if the weather stays clear it is off in the car to my dark sky site for a spot of HEQ5 drift alignment and WA imaging. Pray for clear skies for the next 4 hours or so, that is all I need. Never drift aligned before, so tonight is for experimentation.

Tom

[Ant]

Sounds like you had fun. The sky, although clear, was milky in my neck of the woods as well.

It's nice to hear that you went home happy - thats important.

Ant

[James]

"tired and cold but happy!"

Can't ask for much more than that!

Andrew - your Zoom.... I'm in the middle of typing up a review of the Zoom and I haven't experienced anything other than very minor kidney-beaning. Did you rotate the eye end of the eyepiece to bring up the 'eyeguard'. It helps me with positioning my eye in that eyepiece.

James

[GazOC]

Great report Andrew, looks like you've got a 'keeper'

[John]

Great report Andrew, looks like you've got a 'keeper'

Yep, very nice report Andrew. Don't get rid of that scope in a hurry (unless it's to me ) - I sold an ED100 a while back that I bought for a song - I've regretted it ever since

John