In and out of love with a Dob?

[Jim L]

Monica and I had her 10” Dob out for the first time last night at my favorite observing location. We were too excited to remember to take a photograph, but here’s one from an earlier session showing the view to the south:

We’re working on the Messier objects so we began our evening with the Leo Triplet followed by numerous galaxies in the Virgo Super Cluster. Seeing and transparency so so, but the views were still spectacular and galaxies were everywhere.

Monica’s favorite constellation is Scorpius so next up were Ptolemy’s Cluster and the Butterfly Cluster, and then M22 and the Lagoon and Trifid Nebulas in Sagittarius. The biggest surprise of the evening was the globular cluster M4 in Scorpius. We had a look at M4 through one of our 4” refractors from our light polluted back yard the evening before, where it was the dimmest of smudges only visible with averted vision, but through the Dob, under darker stars, it was a mass of hundreds of resolved stars easily enjoyed with direct vision. That was a very pleasant surprise and confirmed our decision to purchase her new scope. All in all a great evening under the stars.