2nd light with the Starwave 102ED-R

[IB20]

Had the 4” Starwave ED-R out last night on the AZ4  which hasn’t seen much action so far. Had to use it as a giant finder with the 25mm BST which actually worked really well, all that straight through finder practice with the Tak must have helped!

Despite a lingering sky brightness it gave most pleasing views of globular clusters M56, M13 and M92, surprisingly bright too. In the latter two, single stars were resolvable at the edges; showing noticeably more than a 3” - probably the targets I’ve seen the biggest jump in resolution on so far! Tried for more messier globs M10, M12, and M107 but they were all lower down and swamped by the background brightness.

As it was too bright for Galaxy spotting and not having a finder on the scope, I turned the scope to Zeta Herc which at 102x gave no indication of a secondary companion. Dialling up the mag with the 4mm TOE to 178x, occasionally showed an imperfect disc popping into view. Stretching the mag even more to 286x with the 2.5 TOE now showed a blob on the first diffraction ring around 4 o’clock - wonderful, pretty sure I haven’t managed this double with either dob or Tak before.

Turning to Lyra, the first constellation I explored with a proper telescope, pretty much around 3 years ago to the day. The double double giving up its splits at 102x as perfect white discs; this scope is real quality, it doesn’t quite beat the Tak 76Q in its diffraction ring control but it does a very close job of matching it.

Back to it and M57 was showing as a faint smokey ring and a real favourite of mine, open cluster Stephenson 1 looking marvellous as usual; to my eye delta lyrae has a greenish colouration to it that I’ve seen in no other star. No sign of M56 in the glare of the night so dropped down to Albireo for the famous orange and blue show, terrific!

Finished the night cruising the star fields of Cygnus chorused by the hoot of a nearby owl but it was reaching time to pack up and head to bed before being rudely awakened by a toddler at a criminal hour of the day. 

Great session despite the lack of darkness and really looking forward to the reappearance of the gas giants for the 4” to have a go at and to compare to the little Tak.

[RobertI]

26 minutes ago, IB20 said:

open cluster Stephenson 1 looking marvellous as usual; to my eye delta lyrae has a greenish colouration to it that I’ve seen in no other star.

Lovely report, glad you are enjoying your 102ED. You’ve highlighted a couple of interesting objects to look out for. 

[MalcolmM]

Great report and Stephenson 1 (which I had never heard of) sounds well worth a look. 

Malcolm 

[Nicola Fletcher]

Thanks for the great report - I’ll try to hunt down Stephenson 1 too!

I agree that is a super telescope - I also have the FC76 and I love using both.