A pleasant couple of hours

[RobertI]

The skies cleared after raining all day, and I was presented with a beautifully transparent dark sky by 9pm. I set up the 102ED-R and C8 either side of the Skytee and 'did' some Mars. Seeing was ok but not fabulous, however in moments of stillness there was amazing detail popping out. I had intended to sketch but it was cold, I was tired so I just enjoyed looking. I didn't really have a chance to do a direct comprison of the scopes as I was using different magnifications in each, but I would have been happy to tease out detail with either, probably getting more detail out of the C8. The C8 eventually dewed up (I was too tired to set up dew control) so I carried on with the 102ED-R and scanned the area around Cassiopea and Perseus with the 38mm and 21mm eyepieces. What an enjoyable experience just sitting comfortably (on my new observing chair) and scanning those star rich regions. The delights included Kembles Cascade, fitting into the entire FOV of the 38mm, NCC1502, the double cluster,  the ET cluster, some large cluster like Stock 2 and numerous other unidentifed clusters, doubles and coloured stars. And still no dew on the lens by the end although everything else seemed to be dripping.

[vineyard]

Sounds blissful - I need to brush up on my use of setting circles and then I want to check some of those you mention out, thank you!

[scarp15]

Good session, just nice to be out, enjoy your new observer's chair, cannot beat just sitting back and looking up. Similar arrangement with two scopes out 8" and 3.5", the seeing was average, attention mostly on Mars, with some fleetingly good contrast at 120x.

[RobertI]

5 hours ago, vineyard said:

Sounds blissful - I need to brush up on my use of setting circles and then I want to check some of those you mention out, thank you!

No problem!

3 hours ago, scarp15 said:

Good session, just nice to be out, enjoy your new observer's chair, cannot beat just sitting back and looking up. Similar arrangement with two scopes out 8" and 3.5", the seeing was average, attention mostly on Mars, with some fleetingly good contrast at 120x.

Yes its nice to have scopes sided by side and I've done it alot. I must admit though I think I was a bit too tired and I ended up doing a lot of 'fiddling' instead of observing! I should have just stuck the ED on my CG5 EQ mount, sat down and enjoyed Mars.