A great night observing

Tonynexevo925 · April 9, 2017

Well the weather hasn't been great this year and when it has been ok there have often been other things going on (or sticking my head out of the door may have revealed a clear sky when the forecast said no... and a few glasses of wine meant no viewing was sensible)

Anyway, last night the forecast was great and I decided to set up anyway as I wanted to test my new Baader BBHS diagonal and EPs. Targets were simply Jupiter and then the moon.

Set up for testing was the Orion VX14 and the TV85 (always my benchmark). The test EPs were the Ethos 21mm and Nagler T5 31mm.

Expectations weren't high but as it got later it seems the skies were as good as I can recall... so good that I decided to do more than just testing. So I added the Delos 8mm and the Nagler 3.5mm along with the TV2.5 Barlow. I also added the Baader 0.6, 0.9 and 1.8 filters so I could have a decent session on the moon as well.

I spent a good hour on Jupiter on both scopes and all the EPs but settled for a long time on the Delos 8mm (barlowed was also great but the speed of travel was too fast in the VX14 so I did mostly at 8mm).

It was fascinating to watch the GRS moving across and it is the first time I have seen it through the VX14. Very pleased.

So by this time it was after 1am and I went back to the moon and so impressed with the seeing that I was able to use the 3.5mm with Barlow and obviously the detail was amazing - I wasn't able to use my 2" filters on the VX14 and was using the TV85 for the moon and the images below were simply taken with the iPhone 7 - not the best but hopefully give a snapshot of the fun I had.

I need to work out how to use the filters on the VX14 as there seems to be a thread on the moonlite focuser but I couldn't get at it as it sits above the tube... will check next chance I get. With the Baader diagonal it is so easy to add and remove multiple filters and reinsert into the scope.

Anyway, I was very happy with the evening and wish I'd also taken some Jupiter images but maybe next time - enjoy the result.