Baby Tak goes to Portugal

[MalcolmM]

I cannot describe how happy I was that I was able to fit a 60CB, Gitzo tripod, Manfrotto head and 3 eyepieces into the tiny bag Easy Jet allow on as free cabin baggage!

We are spending a week near Monchique in Portugal walking and I thought I'd try to take the Tak. It was bought as a travel scope after all, these though it gets used constantly due to it's ease of use as a grab and go!

First night and it's a shame the moon is out as I think the dark skies here could be amazing (up quite high and virtually no lights to be seen). However, I have never seen such steady seeing. The trapezium was easy with a 10 LE. Rigel was easy with a Nagler Zoom at 3mm. Orion seemed very high in the sky and despite only 60mm and a bright moon M42 showed much structure and was surprisingly bright. Even Sirius was steady with lovely diffraction rings. No sign of the Pup but i presume 60mm is simply not enough aperture. The moon was as steady as a rock! Hardly a ripple! It's going to be such an anticlimax to observe from my home skies when I'm back

Unfortunately I didn't take my moon atlas and I had no mobile signal at the scope for an on-line moon atlas so I was not able to identify much of what I was seeing (being new to this game). But Gassendi was stunning with N and M very easy. Schiller looked interesting and the mountains around Schiller T on its west side were lit up like a jewel. Clavius's floor was littered with craterlets. Lots of interesting features/mountains just south of Plato. I find this area fascinating as the individual features really stand out against Mare Imbrium.

The sun was just lighting up a large crater in spectacular fashion just beyond Sinus Iridum which I think was Herschel.

It was an amazing experience observing in such steady conditions; just wish I'd sneaked the 76 objective module in amongst the hiking gear

Malcolm

[Stu]

Sounds excellent @MalcolmM. I hope you get some clear skies while you are there, though the Moon won’t be particularly helpful!

[Highburymark]

Nice report!
Have to admit, the first thing I do when we’re planning a holiday is check the Moon situation. Never tell my better half that I’m more concerned with the Moon and prevailing light pollution than I am with hotels or other such unimportant details. Doesn’t always work though…..

(PS: ‘In the Sky’ website is very useful for plotting future trips - can tap in any location and date and it’ll show precise details of night sky).

[MalcolmM]

@Highburymark my partner is already wise to my scheming Unfortunately we are tied to school holidays however last night the seeing was so steady that that in itself was a wow factor! I'll look into that website, sounds good.

@Stu the forecast is looking good but I'm going to have to lavish just as much attention to my partner as I do to the Takahashi

Malcolm