Finally, It's getting dark at night

[Albireo380]

Up here in "Bonnie Scotland", just on the northern edge of Glasgow (56 degrees 4 minutes North) it has been almost impossible to do any reasonable observing since early May. It never really got dark at all. Only over the last few weeks have the darker nights crept back. SO ... last night, the weather was clear, with only a light breeze, I put the LX90 (+ new wedge) into the car and drove off to Glen Fruin, about 20 miles north west of the city - still not a really dark sky site, but good enough for the first session of the season.

I arrived at about 10.15 and set up the scope. It was only the 2nd time I had used the wedge and I had had some problems 2 star syncing last time. With some trepidation I lined the scope finder on Polaris and tweaked the wedge to get it in the centre of a 32mm EP, then swapped to a 16mm EP and made final adjustments. I then "switched on" and ran through the 2 star alignment process - I picked Arcturus as the first star. The GOTO took me to about 3 degrees from the the target star and I used the hand controller to centre it. Then GOTO Altair - with the same 3 degree adjustment required (not sure why this is happening - it was always spot on in AltAz mode). However, both stars "sync'ed" and I got a successful alignment message on the hand controller.

So I used the GOTO for VEGA - spot on, then M57 - spot on (centred nicely in the 16mmEP - x125 magnification), so I began to have some faith. I had a good look at the cloudy ring that is M57, it was about 10.45pm by now and the sky was nicely dark (true darkness is currently about 11.15pm this far north). Pleased with the view of M57, I used the GOTO and centred M13 bang in the middle of the EP - okay, all three of these objects are pretty close to each other, but I was gettin happier about the accuracy of the Meade GOTO when using a wedge. So I then slewed to Alcor / Mizar - again nicely centred without needing to use the hand controller. The double was split nicely at x125.

The weather was turning, with haze and cloud spreading from the west. It was also becoming very humid and I realised that the LX90 corrector plate was dewing up - wow, it was 11 degrees celcius where I was - so it must be really humid.

I persevered a little longer (with my dewed optics) and had a look at Albireo and epsilon Lyrae - always favourites of mine - then was aware that the dewing was getting so bad, it was getting pointless to continue. So I packed up and went home.

But I was not unhappy - that was my first real observing session for 3 months (I had "played around" with the Meade LPI last month - but no real observing).

So roll on the increasingly dark nights - just got my appetite whetted again.

Hope you are all getting some dark, clear skies.

Tom

[daz]

Nice report Tom - really glad you're back out again!!

Sounds like the cobwebs have been blown away

[The Warthog]

Enjoyed your report. I'm wondering, do you have to use the wedge if you aren't doing photography? Won't the system find stuff for you in alt-az mode?