October the 11th Going Retro

[philj]

Last night I set up the main rig imaging M33 whilst this was churning away for a couple of hours I decided to give my 1961 Vintage Swift 60mm refractor an outing. I bought this from an antiques fair ealier in the year for a song and have restored it as well as making an 1 1/4" adaptor so I can use real eyepieces. Fraid my old eyes cant cope with the 1" eps

Heres the extract from my log............

Visual

Seeing, clear windy, not the most stable conditions but the rain during the day had cleared the sky making for good transparency.

Set the little Swift up with the 1 ¼” adaptor, Meade Diagonal and Antares 20mm and 10mm plossls.

Jupiter looked good in 20mm but the atmospherics due to the wind was not doing detail any good. . Even on 10mm there was a surprising lack of false colour in this scope compared to other achromats I have seen, just a bit on the limb was evident. The larger EQ belts were easy to spot with both EPs but detail in them was not on for these conditions

So I decided to have a go at seeing what DSOs I could pull in and see if my old star hopping skills had faded since using Goto for the past 4 years, the swift has an eq mount but no drives or slow motions.

M13 easy. 20mm showed nice bright blob fading to the edges. No resolution to stars on the main body but maybe some detectable on the outer edges, hmmm not sure

M57, easy, Small and faint but definitely there. 20mm I could not make out the ring shape just a small blob. 10mm, yep the object resolved into a faint ring wit averted vision

Epsilon Lyra, both sides split easilt with 10mm. 1st sight 20mm gave an inkling that the 2 main components were elongated but then some carefully focusing and yep, just separated when conditions allowed.

M27, the 20mm showed a lovely apple core shape nice and bright. 10mm showed the main body of the apple core but lost some of the extremeties.

M45, 20mm lovely sight, got all main stars in the fov.

M31,32, NGC205. All there, M31 big bright blob feathering out as I moved further away from the core. M32 easy to spot but 205 took a little more looking.

M36, 37, 38 all there. 37 was dimmer than I expected but still nice. 36 and 38 easily spotted

Double cluster, tons of stars easily fitting into the 20mm fov. The little Swift still gave the diamonds on velvet effect, nice.

M81 82 20mm, yep found them, 82 easier to spot and definitely elongated with a just discernible mottling towards the middle. M81 was definitely oval. Both nice and bright for saying they were so low.10mm didn’t really help on 82, if the object were higher and out of the murk I reckon it would show more detail.

M33, 20mm. Now for the test of the scope and me:D M33 just found it by star hopping and moving the scope a fraction to find an elongated faint blob moving in the fov.Some mottling evident with averted vision

Oh and also saw 3 meteors, sporadics over the evening.

Philj

[albedo0.39]

Really nice report, and that old style font made the report so much more authentic. so, the $64,000 - did you enjoy your time at the EP ?

[philj]

Absolutely

I frequently do this with my main scopes, whichever scope Im not imaging with I use visually on an HEQ5 to while away the hours whilst the rig is snapping away.

This time was very different and really good to relive the old days using a 60mm and a manumatic mount.

Heres the link to the Swift 839 thread, shows what the little scope looks like http://stargazerslounge.com/members-equipment-gallery/82050-1961-swift-839-refractor.html

Philj

[Doc]

Amazing you saw all those objects with 60mm of aperture. The scope must be something special. Well done and please post some more reports if you can.

[John]

Thats a nice report PhilJ - thanks for posting it

I must get my old Tasco 60mm F/13 out - it's a 1960's vintage and optically very good. It gave me my 1st views of so many lovely objects that I can't bear to part with it !.

Amazing what 60mm will show if you are patient

John

[iamjulian]

Amazing what you can see which a relatively small aperture. Not sure I am ready to dust off my 50mm refractor yet though. I doubt the optics will be as good as those in your vintage swift.

[philj]

Glad you liked the report.

Go for it guys, if you can replace the 1" eps with modern 1 1/4" then it really is surprising what you can see with these 60mm scopes. OK some of the 1" eps are good quality , especially the Swifts, but I just cannot get on with them even with terrestial.

The Swift was renowned for its quality in its day, there are also associations with early Takahashi and it shows.

Philj