Productive Night

Last night was one of my most productive nights I have had out with my scopes, usually I would stick to one object, such as the Moon, Saturn, or Jupiter, this is usually governed by what my local horizon will let me see, as I have many houses and trees in my area.

I started out with the last bit of daylight trying to collimate my scope. I finally seem to have it down on what needs to be done and how to do it, it wasn’t easy by any means to understand all the jargon, and different terms, but once I was over that hurdle, it all seemed to come in to place, just as collimation should. I found doing the collimation easiest to do in the daylight; it was very easy to judge the positioning of the secondary.

Once I finished collimation I let the scope cool, an hour or so, until the sun set, My First Target was Saturn, Saturn was pretty tricky specially in the twilight, but I was able to locate it once my eyes adjusted.

Saturn in my new 10” was a real treat, I was under the impression I would have to wait until the winter time before it would start to rise again, to see it with all my trees, but to my delight, it was very easy to spot up until around midnight! The EP’s I use most out of my Accessory kit is the 32mm, and 15mm, coupled with my Ultima Barlow. These easily showed Saturn’s banding and Cassini division was easily detectable, a first for me! I watched Saturn descend into the West, and the quality of the view would come and go, as it dipped lower, however the quality of the view diminished, as expected.

Since I was in the neighborhood, and looking at my ‘NightWatch’, and ‘Turn Left at Orion’, I saw that the Beehive Cluster was around this area, I found it following ‘Turn Left at Orion’ and it was an amazing sight, all those stars in a tight area, it looked really cool in my finder scope, and best at 37x. I spent a bit of time here.

Next I was able to split Polaris and look at its companion Star, wow, that’s a tiny companion! What I found interesting, is that other than ‘Turn Left at Orion’, no other book I have or software for that matter describes it as a double! Why is this, is it not a true double, it just happens to lie very close to Polaris from our prospective?

I also found the double of Alcor, and I think one other, but I forget which.

My final target was Jupiter; high in the SW sky it was the best view I have had. Just as everyone on Cloudy Nights stress, the more you view, the more you’ll see! I was able to easily find the GRS, and at times, more detail of the belts\clouds than I have before!

New Scope with Mods

Here is the Scope fully assembled and with all the mods i needed to do, minus the flocking, as i am awaiting for it to arrive.

In this Picture I have my power tank (lower left), and my scope ready to rock and roll ( but its going to be cloudy tonight) :(




Here is a close up of my Dew Heaters, Optical finder, Rigel Quick Finder, and my Green Laser Pointer with mount.





And over the weekend i purchased the parts for a cooling fan for my mirror, and here it is, total cost was $15 canadian after taxes, $6 for the 12v DC connector, and $9 for the Fan from Future Shop. I was going to purchase the one from Orion, but i thought i would try to make my own first, plus if i got it from Orion, i would need to purchase the DC connector for it, and that was going to run me around $40+.



I used multiple layers of velcro to attach the fan, and to help supress any vibrations the fan may cause. This will also allow for easy removal.
Now i just need for the clouds to clear :)


Matthew.

My new NexStar 10" Scope!!!!

Well I finally did it, after checking out all my options and looking at my wallet I have finally upgraded from my wee NexStar 114GT to a NewStar 10” Dobsonian. The NewStar is the EXACT same make as the Orion Intelliscopes (minus the intelliscope) and, the SkyWatcher.

I picked it up on my lunch hour and had to leave it in the car until I got off work yesterday evening, I raced home, ate a little food, then put the Scope together, see the images below for the details.


Here is the OTA still in the box, good thing about the 10” is it fit across the back seat of my mid-size car, with no problem, and still in the box!



Here is the DOB Stand before assembly, along with the parts and tools supplied with the unit!

Parts

Tools


The toughest part was screwing the base to the swivel base; thankfully Jennifer helped me out without too much of a fuss :)


Now considering I did not get home until 8:45pm and still had to eat dinner, I managed to get this all together and out the door for an hour long session, it was a little bit chilly, I did not allow anytime for cool down as I was just too excited. I did a quick collimation check with my laser collimator, and collimation was almost spot on, just a quick tweak of the secondary and the primary got it good enough for me for the first light!

My impressions:

All I have to say is WOW this 10” scope blew me away, while I have been in to astronomy for over a year, I knew the 10” would not show me Hubble type images, but it was everything I ever expected and MORE! The Stars were nice an pinpoint (something I was never able to achieve with my 114GT), I used my 32mm EP, as this is my favorite and the differences were out of this world on the Moon, which was behind some branches of a tree, even with this in the way the images of the Moon were Astounding, next on to Jupiter, it too was in a poor position of right about my roof, Jupiter was still amazing to look at, I could even see belts with the 32mm!

I am so excited to get out again with my new scope, I have my flocking paper ordered and hopefully will get the Ultima Barlow next week.