Hello Everyone--
As you know, I haven't been around much this year, having travelled 74,000 ACTUAL air miles so far. I spent Saturday night, 3 May, showing Hale-Bopp to the Captains of the Auto Ferry from Tangier, Morocco to Gibraltar. It was neatly framed between Africa and Europe. There are some benefits to being away from most of one's astro equipment! My only travel scope has been a 77mm Flourite Kowa, so I purchased an Astrophysics 105mm f/5.8 Traveller and it arrived last Wednesday.
On Saturday evening, Kris (hereinafter referred to as 'the Queen') and I took the 105mm f/5.8 Traveller and my eyepiece box to Fremont Peak to test it out and socialize, of course.
Rich NEUSCHAEFER was there with his 180mm Astrophysics, Gil Chin had his 4" Zeiss-trophysics, and I set up next to them on refractor row. Across the road was John Hales with his 18" and Michelle Stone had her 18" Obsession, in addition to several other large reflectors and freindly folks. The seeing and transparency were generally good to very good, as were the jokes circulating.
I checked out the moon at 18x with the 35mm Panoptic's 3.8 deg. FOV and found it very small, so I switched to Hale-Bopp, a more appropriate object. The dust tail was all that I could see, and its shape was unusual. It sure is fading fast.
As Rich noticed that the seeing was good, and the detail on the moon was good, I switched to higher power, using a 5mm Takahashi eyepiece. The detail was very sharp. This started a sequence of events. We kept trying to see when the Traveller would give out on high magnification. Out came the 2x Barlows, and Gil brought out his 3.8mm Zeiss eyepiece. Amazingly, the moon's image stayed sharp even at that magnification (320x if my mental math is correct).
After this test, I walked the Traveller and its Televue Gibraltar mount up the road toward the Obseervatory to check out Omega Centauri. It's not as nice from here as down south, but I just wanted to see it thru the scope. At 90x (7mm Nagler) I could just resolve a few stars. I can't wait to really see it!!
NGC 5128 is just about 4 degrees north of it, so I put the 35mm Panoptic back in to see if I could find the galaxy at all. It was faint, but clearly visible. Galaxies and Aperture really need each other!!! I carried the scope and mount back down to refractor row.
Rich was looking at Mars with his 180mm f/9 and he noticed that Syrtis Major was rotating into view. So, we put the Traveller with Barlows, etc., on Mars, and surprisingly, all the surface details were visible in it as well. What was very sharp and obvious in the 180mm was 'detectable' in the 105mm. Syrtis Major was easily seen as was the polar cap some other details. At this point, we mounted the 105mm Traveller on Gil's Astrophysics equatorial mount. My altazimuth is fine for most things I do with a 4" refractor (<=170x), but at very high magnification it is too much trouble.
Gil suggested double star observing would be fun, and we located Nu Scorpii with separations of 2.3" and 1.1" (for the pair). There was a large obvious gap on the 2.3" pair, and the other, more difficult (and brighter) 1.1" was clearly separable when the seeing was steady. This is the theoretical limit for a 105mm so it appeared to be about correct.
I have seen a figure 8 on a 0.7" pair in Bootes in my 102mm f/8 Takahashi, but I couldn't remember which star it was as I didn't have the past Sky and Tel article that listed it, and I'm too old to remember much more than my name and address}
We then checked Antares, and the greenish fainter star was extremely obvious. Next came Epsilon Lyrae, everyone's favorite, and both were clearly separated at only 120x with the 5mm and no Barlow. Michelle remarked how clear the separation was on these stars.
By this time, the Milky Way and Sagittarius was up, so I went back to the 35mm Panoptic at 18x and nearly 4 degree FOV. I put in a UHC filter and checked out how easily both the Lagoon and Trifid fit into the CENTER of the field. I wish my 18" Obsession had a 4 degree FOV!!!!!
We all were happy with the results of the Traveller tests. If you are in the market for a really portable telescope, everyone present can vouch for the quality of this instrument.
The best thing that happened during the night for me was the comments I recieved from many observers when I remarked quite loudly that "this Traveller has clearly outperformed ALL the other telescopes up here tonite". The answers from the reflector folks were especially humbling.
Clear skies everyone!!!