Saturday Night - A Few Gems

[Qualia]

Should have posted this up a few days ago, but my boss is still in hospital making my work load double, I've come down with ear infection, trying to find a new place in a new part of Spain and so on.

Anyway, last Saturday I headed out to a reasonably good dark site, this time to a rural area surrounded by farm land. I won't bore you with details but it was a fine evening and finally spent about 6 hours under the stars. Came home exhausted but buzzing.

I simply couldn't sketch everything I saw, but have included a few of the gems studied that evening. Needless to say, the scanned images neither do the object itself nor original sketch much justice, but you get some kind of idea. I spent most of the evening in Orion, Canis Major, Monoceros and Gemini. I also spent a little while with Jupiter but ended up making a very simple sketch, so I could concentrate more on a few of the clusters.

This week has been rather fine weather wise. The Sun has been playing game and I've been experimenting with the Continuum filter. I'm also the proud owner of gorgeous 14mm Delos which I got from Charon here at SGL. It arrived all the way from Greece in mint condition, so when I have a moment I'll also post up a review.

Sorry I haven't been around much this week but I hope you forgive my absence. Peace and love to you all

[sologuitarist61]

Wonderful sketches Qualia - great detail and finesse, very good indeed!

[Ags]

Very beautiful!

[AlexB67]

Very nice sketches Qualia.

Look forward to your impression of the Delos and also perhaps how you find it versus the 15mm TV Plossl, which I believe you also own  judging by your case picture. It has been there sort of tempting to stop gap with a 15mm TV plossl for a while before I will inevitably buy the 14mm Delos in time next on my list, but I guess a 15mm TV plossl could be moved on at very little loss even if I did not want to keep it after getting a 14mm Delos , hence the temptation  That said I have the 15m BST anyway that I like in the BST series, it is not as if it exactly inadequate or that I need a TV plossl, still doesn't mean I don't want one ( I must be getting ocularitis)

[Qualia]

Thank you for the kind comments

Alex, I'm not sure what the move from a BST to a TV Plossl would improve - if anything - for I've never used the former eyepieces. The reasons I like the plossls are numerous, but essentially, they offer me the following:

They're light weight and physically small. This is great when using the f/10 on the AZ 4, there's no balancing issue on the dob and these physical characteristics are very useful when I want to head out to the sticks or away for the weekend with minimal load. 

They might be smaller and cheaper than any other TV eyepiece, but nothing of the legendary Tele Vue image quality is compromised.

TVs are generally par-focal, so there's not a lot of refocusing going on when swapping between them.

They have excellent viewing comfort - for me, at least. I wear glasses but not when viewing.

Hope this helped
 

[Mike73]

Great to see your sketches next to a report Rob and I agree that no matter how good a sketch is it will never be half as good as whats seen through the EP but we can only do our best.

The astronomy buzz is a funny thing aswell.....I can go out for an all nighter, come home at 5am, get into bed but I can never sleep because I'm thinking about the things I've seen that night!

Hope things calm down in work and you settle into a new home.

[jetstream]

Great sketches Rob!I'm going to check out NGC 2244 area tonight now