A chilly Sunday evening

[MattJenko]

It has been a while coming, but myself and another SGLer decided to meet up in my back garden and have a combined viewing session on a Sunday evening and compare some scopes and EPs. I had my Skyliner 250px all cooled and ready to go, and Rob brought along a Skytee and the trusty Megrez 72. There was the option of a C8 in the trunk and an ED80 if I could be bothered to detach the DSLR which is permanently attached to it these days. My Christmas present SLV 6mm was ready to go.

The skies were a frosty clear, which bode well, and as the sun set, before my guest arrived, I was treated to a sight which will stay with me for quite some time. It involved no telescope, no binoculars, just my own eyes, standing at my back door. The orange afterglow of the Sun was still beating the little light glow from Colchester in the West but there were three bright objects in the sky, marking a little right dogleg just above the glow. Mars, Venus and Mercury. This was my first ever sighting of Venus, and for the life of me I don't know why, as it was extremely bright. The slightly redder Mars stood higher up to the left, and the faint Mercury off to the right of Venus was clearly seen. The planets with the darkening skies above and the sinking sunset below was quite frankly one of the prettiest things I have ever seen.

With the scopes setup and the welcome warming tea drunk, the dregs freezing solid, we began observing. I have a decent darkish sky garden, in a little village with no streetlights and surrounded by fields, so the conditions were very good, albeit below freezing. We had no real plan, so we went for something we could both easily point at to 'warm' up. The Orion Nebula. In the dob, this is a hazy cloud, with decent edge definition, and the cluster stars and pretty distinct. At low power they were nice and crisp, or so I thought until I looked through the Megrez. Now that gives crisp views. At higher mags, the dob won out with its obvious advantages, but the tight stars are a real treat in the refractor. After this object, we went for a few doubles.

We started with Rigel, and I did not even know this was a double. After some straining, we came to the meat of the session. The comparison of the Vixen SLV 6mm to a standard 6mm and we could both see that the SLV was brighter and better from edge to edge and also was the EP which we both agreed we could make out the beta star and fortunately we both agreed where the beta star lay in relation to Rigel! 

We then moved to Almach, and here it was clear where the power of the Dob lay, as the separation was much more pronounced, and the colours seemed richer than in the Megrez. This was the same on Meissa.

A few other famous objects were tried, the double cluster and Andromeda, but both seemed a little washed out, and the double cluster was certainly not the standout object I have seen before with the Dob.

Jupiter on the other hand. As Jupiter was rising, we had the rather silly idea of sticking the 250px tube on the Skytee to see if it would work and to just try it out.

The results looked impressive, but the reality was a wobbly one. Possibly a more stable tripod would have helped, but this was not a touchable configuration!

As for the views. Jupiter looked awesome. Using the SLV 6mm was pushing the seeing, and the majority of the views in the Dob were bottom of swimming pool views, but the moments of clarity revealed polar detail, banding detail and colour and crisp little moons. It is certianly the best I have ever seen of this planet and Rob was of the same opinion. A 10mm Radian provided much more stable views and still revealed multiple banding and glorious little tantalising surface detail and colourations, indicating a lot more details to be be discovered. The red spot was nowhere to be seen, but the bands showed definite structure and once back on it's more stable Dob base, the rest of the evening was spent looking at it.

As we packed up for the evening, we realised that all our great views had been done whilst the secondary was nearly completely frosted over, which was disappointing in one regard, that we could have had even better views, tempered by the fact that there are even better views to be had in the future.

Thanks to Rob and here's to thicker socks and sensation in toes.

Matt

[Bart]

A good evening by the sound of it. Sunday was my first decent session in a while also.

You could rig up a fancy anti dew solution or do as I do, get an old (or new!) hairdryer and an extension lead and give the secondary a blast when required. Even on long sessions of 4-6 hours, I've only ever needed to do this twice. Not overly practical in the field, but like you, I observe from reasonably dark back garden (NELM 5.6) so mains power is available!

[jkwhinfrey]

Sounds like it was a lot of fun and the socks are never thick enough in my experience. The Megrez isn't much of a counterweight is it. I've never had a secondary (or primary for that matter) freeze over, but then my scopes are smaller than the 250px.

Thanks for sharing your experiences Matt.

James

[mark RD]

Sound like a great evening.

[Astro Imp]

That was a very enjoyable read, thanks Matt. Seems you had some fun in the cold.

[RobertI]

Thanks for the post Matt and thanks for your hospitality on the night. I was seriously impressed with the resolving power of the 10" Dob and I think it would be fun next time to try some close doubles, globs and smaller PNs.

It was a great session and I am really looking forward to some further adventures with the Dob preferably without a frosted secondary!

[FenlandPaul]

Great write-up and well done on enjoying the Mars / Venus / Mercury conjunction - what a sight!

Paul

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