Hey Folks!

Well, after a long and tiring week at work, I finally got home around 8:00pm this evening and thought I might try giving my new "shorty" a quick dry run with my new eyepieces. The seeing looked promising so around 9:15pm I went out to take a look and what a pleasant surprise! For the first time in weeks the sky was very transparent all the way down to the horizon and the seeing was very good. All that rain we had did a great job clearing the atmosphere and the moon had not yet risen high enough in the sky to be a factor at all.

So I set up the scope and started to look for some of the first objects I had seen a few weeks back with my binoculars. I plugged in the Panoptic 19mm EP - with the this short focal length scope, I get about 20X magnfication and roughly a 4mm exit pupil. Wow, M44 looked great. Just then my neighbor turned on her bathroom lights which lit up my backyard for about 20 minutes. The eyepatch and one hand cupped around my right eye helped reduce some of the stray light. While I was viewing M44, I saw something move quickly through the field of view (about 3 degrees with the Panotpic 19mm) so I decided to track it - it must have been a satellite because it was small, fairly dim and it moved through the western sky and into the north/northwestern sky at a steady pace.

Next I decided I would look for M81 in Ursa Major - I thought I spotted it one night with my bino's but I wasn't sure. I took a quick look with the bino's to see if I could spot it and something seemed to emerge where M81 is supposed to be. Sure enough, I was able to spot it with the short tube - I had to use averted vision to see it clearly, but there it was! I spent a few minutes looking to see if I could make out any detail, it seemed to me that I could just about make out a spiral structure but no real detail was visible. Still, this was the first galaxy I've viewed on my own (I saw M31 through a friend's 8" Celestron SCT) so it was a real joy.

To make a long story short, I took a peek at M3, M13 and M92 to see how the short tube would do on globular clusters. I also tried popping in the Nagler 7mm on M13 but 57X is just not enough magnification to resolve it into stars. I also tried the Nagler 7mm on Mars and while the view was very sharp and clear, there was no detail. Probably that 7mm EP will be better for viewing lunar and planetary objects.

One thing I do have to say. I absolutely love the wide field of view the Panoptic and Nagler EP's gave me. I could not believe how pleasant and relaxing it was! I tried comparing the 19mm Panoptic to my Orion Sirius Plossl 32mm and the difference was stunning. When I plugged in the Plossl the viewing seemed cramp. Also, believe it or not, the Panoptic 19mm seemed brighter than the Plossl 32mm (even with the 6.7mm exit pupil) and the Panoptic was obviously a whole lot sharper and sharp all the way to the edge of the field. Needless to say, I was practically drooling all over myself with pleasure. The Panoptic is a real winner as far as I can tell - it just put the Kelner and Plossl EP's to shame. I'm reserving judgement on the 7mm Nagler until I have a chance to view the moon or a few planets, but I did *love* the super wide field - it was so comfortable and relaxing.

During the course of the 1 1/2 hour viewing session, I tracked two additional satellites (they seemed to be everywhere!) and a very strange and dim object that resembled a cross between an hourglass and a cigar, travelling low in the N/NW sky into the N/NE sky very low on the horizon. I'm not sure what that object was - I didn't see any lights on it and it faded out of view in the NE horizon pretty quickly. Anyone have any idea what that was?

I started to get pretty tired around 11:00pm and decided to pack it in. The moon was also beginning to appear through the trees in the southern sky so I decided that was enough for the night.

Wow, what a lot of fun. Every time I go out I seem to enjoy myself more. I can't wait for really dark skies - maybe I'll get my first peak at a nebula next weekend at Fremont Peak.