A night under the crab!

[andrew63]

26 feb.

It was a bright clear afternoon and with luck a nice clear dark night also. I wanted to see M1 in several newish eyepiece as not had chance with bad weather since Christmas plus see how my newish 100ED performed in good seeing.

First, forget waiting to cool optics and go to power etc. Took scope on alt mount pop in eyepiece, open pocket sky atlas, turn upside down to give view as per finder, look for field in finder then check in eyepiece and find M1 in field of view - quite amazing!

I wanted to see how the view of theCrab would be in different lens. I used 4 lowish mag eyepieces to give a close comparison. Mag from 28 to 45x - 32mm televue 26 meade japan 21 apogee and 20 silvertop that came with scope. The televue did not provide the best view, the 26 provided a slightly improved contrast against sky the silvertop was ok but the 21 apogee provided a more pleasing view somehow more crisp. I don't know much about this eyepiece, 70 deg view but not to sure if they are available now, but they are impressive in a F9 scope which will not test them too much. The meade 26 gave the most pleasing full field view to me with M1 framed in a rich field.

andrew

[stolenfeather]

Congratulations Andrew!

I have tried to locate M1 with my 10" Dob many times and have never been successful.

Isabelle