Jamie Dillon told me that the wonderful thing about the "new equipment brings cruddy weather" superstition is that it holds water. So it was when I took receipt of the Tele Vue 101 I had ordered from Woodland Hills Camera last Wednesday the skies would be crappy for several days. Indeed, mere hours after the events I describe here, it started raining! But as Paul was bringing out *two* new scopes, I can only take a third of the blame!
After watching the TAC list with interest on Saturday and obtaining confirmation that at least two other folks were going to be going to Henry Coe, I loaded up the equipment and sat impatiently around the house for another hour before taking off.
The group trickled in as darkness crept over the parking lot. Jamie was there with Felix (11" dob from Celestron), Paul LeFevre brought out two scopes: a new homemade dob with very smooth motion and a 4-months-in-the-making 12.5-inch mirror and an 8" SCT (also new), Peter Santangeli brought out an 11" Celestron SCT on an amazing Losmandy G-11 mount, and Tom showed up with a fantastic Meade 102mm apo he was able to acquire for pennies on the dollar.
Myself, I was bringing along my first telescope, a Tele Vue 101. Woodland Hills Camera had a handful of them sitting in stock when I called; this was an amazing fact, since the better part of a dozen other vendors I called had waiting lists 3-6 months deep. Along with the 101, I purchased one each of Tele Vue's eyepiece product lines: a 35mm Panoptic, 20mm Plossl (comes standard with the scope), 7mm Nagler, and a 4mm Radian.
Setting up the TV-101 was easy, though I took it nice and slow. The Gibraltar tripod went up first, and the supplied triangular tray which comes with it (attaching via wingnuts to threaded bolts on hinged plates, which are attached to each of the tripod's legs) also serves to keep the tripod's legs evenly extended. After this procedure is complete, you sit the alt-az mount in a central recepticle, and lift the OTA onto the mount. The OTA is secured to the mount by two wingnuts, which are secured to threaded pins in the OTA's mounting bracket; these pins protrude through the plate on which the OTA rests. The wingnuts are plastic, but lined with metal; they are also complete enclosures, so that you don't have part of a bolt sticking through on which to scratch yourself (or optics!).
The mount is reasonably well-designed. Where the OTA would come into contact with the surface metal is a patch of thick felt, which should prevent marking up the tube, should the tube be misbalanced. Altitude travel tightness is controlled by two brass adjustment knobs, one on each side of the cradle on which the scope is mounted. From a seated position, they can be easily reached. The azimuth tightness control, however, is a wingnut, and is located in a fixed place on the tripod, with the scope cradle resting immediately above it. It doesn't rotate with the scope. Additionally, the clearance given to the wingnut is small enough to cause it to be slightly difficult to get your fingers around when wearing gloves. On the bright side, I found that in two hours of observing I only needed to get to that adjustment once -- and that was because I wanted to see if by tightening the mount's alt and az adjustment screws I could counteract the wind by adding stability to high-powered planetary views. It worked pretty well, but nudging the scope to keep my objects in view became a major chore at that point!
The OTA balances by using what Tele Vue calls a "bat screw" on the OTA's mount ring -- that is, it's got a small rounded plate that easily reveals itself. Once oriented toward the top, you twist it as you would turn a screw. Three revolutions later, the scope is loose enough to smoothly adjust with mild pressure. I initially balanced the scope using the two-pound 35 Panoptic. When I moved to another eyepiece, I used Tele Vue's 12 ounce brass 2-to-1.25 "Equalizer" adapter (sometimes called the "Schwarzenagler"). This worked pretty well, though when paired with the 4 Radian, I believe I felt that the scope was a bit unbalanced.
Operating in the wind meant that I kept everything rather tight. In my mock-up in the living room two days earlier, I had the rig moving as silky smooth as the best dob I've encountered. But if nothing else, I became rather familiar with all my mount's adjustment screws!
After setting up, I knew that I wouldn't want to be using the hood of my car as a table for ever, so I inspected the "roll-up" tables that both Paul and Peter had set up (and which Jamie has on order). They look great. The other accessory which I'm going to have to pick-up post-haste is an eyepiece box. I would end the night sacrificing a few eyepiece cups to the park (on account of high winds blowing them off my tripod tray) -- no more of that!
I would also have appreciated a chair, being a refractor viewer. Without them, I had sore knees by the end of the night.
I don't know how much cool-down time a scope like the 101 requires -- perhaps one hour? -- but tonight it had three.
By the time stars started peeking through the sky at just before 7pm, the group had been discussing packing up and heading down to a deli in Morgan Hill Jamie was raving about.
Weather cooled off fast, partially due to the increasing winds, which caused my TV-101 on its Gibraltar mount to wiggle enough to prevent views any higher than 100x to be useful, which ruled out using my 4mm Radian except during exceptionally still moments.
I spent a lot of time in the 35mm Panoptic. In fact, that's the eyepiece in which the 101 delivered its first real light.
Conveniently, skies cleared around Orion. I flicked on the Tele Vue Starbeam finder (which I had aligned back in the living room at home by aiming the scope at a far-off streetlight) and adjusted the red dot to a faint brightness, and aimed it at M42, the Orion Nebula. I slowly turned the focusing knobs with both hands until stars became pinpoints, and the nebula showed itself, twisting and furling across the center of the dark field. Wow.
I traded the 35 Panoptic's 15x mag and 4.5 degree field of view for the 7 Nagler, and placed my eye to the lens. I remember pausing to make a note specifically at this point in my log book; it reads "amazing contrast." And it really was. The nebula itself was truncated at 77x with a 1.0 degree FOV, but it nearly leapt out at me; what an amazing view!
M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, was the second target of the evening. For this object, I replaced the Panoptic 35 in the scope and was promptly stunned to find the inclined disk far wider than I had possibly imagined. There was a very bright point in the center surrounded by an oval of brighter gray fluff, which in turn was surrounded again by more wispy gray material which stretched off, as if being pulled apart on both ends. Both elliptical companions, M110 at magnitude 8.8 and M32 at mag 9 were evident.
Jamie came over at this point, and we started exploring Orion and some other constellations in which the sky looked favorable.
To start off multiple stars, I split Alnitak, zeta Orion. Burnham measures the separation of the close pair at 2.6", but the 101 split it easily. I was using the 7 Nagler at the time, and I remember wishing I the conditions would allow me to ratchet down to something with a bit more magnification, but this might be simple desire to have everything nice and large in the eyepiece.
Still in Orion, we moved to sigma, where I saw 6 of the 7 stars. Very nice view.
Moving back to the 35 Panoptic, I pulled the scope back, got on my knees, and took in a view of the Pleides. Due to the discomfort of the position (gotta get that chair!), I wasn't able to study the object for any length of time, but it was bright and clear, though some of the stars seemed... well, not quite fuzzy, from the luminescent gas in the cluster. Worthy of much more study.
At this point, the clouds were rolling in and out in various patches. With continued assistance from Jamie, who was calling out directional advice from his station nearby, I made my way to M41, the open cluster in Canis Major.
I enjoyed views of most of these objects through Felix, too. Several times, I found myself glued to Jamie's scope, just as he was glued to mine. At one point he commented what a different universe it was looking through the small apo, both on account of the nature of the optics and the change in orientation.
On the other end of the row of scopes, Peter, Tom and Paul were having a good time. I made my way over there several times to see what they were serving up. I caught a fantastic view of M79 in Paul's 12.5" dob. The homemade mirror produced extremely sharp pinpoints -- I was very impressed with the view. In viewing objects through the 12.5 incher, I had to hold the tube on target, lest the wind slowly but immediately start blowing it off target.
M42 in Peter's 11" SCT showed lots of detail. I only took a 30 second peek, but there were hints of things here that weren't evident in the 101, just as you'd expect. Peter's complete setup was dazzling. Lots of shiny, gadgety things. Were I not there with a brand new scope, I might have been pulled, mothlike, into orbit around his treasure chests.
The remainder of the evening was spent in growing disappointment, as our clear skies were slowly vaporating away. Jamie was hunting down NGC 3077, a 10th magnitude irregular galaxy in Ursa Major (Herschel 1.286), and ended up bagging it before things got too cruddy.
We were all but clouded out by 9pm. It was the most full two hours I've spent in a good, long while. Pleasurable, memorable, fulfilling.
Breaking the equipment down, I paused to feel for dew on any of the TV101's surfaces. Nope. 10 minutes later, I was in the parking lot downwind of my observing location hunting down eyepiece caps that had blown away.
Packing up the Tele Vue equipment was as easy as it was to setup. Breakdown consisted of unwinding a few wingnuts, screwing the metal lenscap in place, and depositing the OTA back in its case. The tripod was broken down by removing the tray and stowing it -- along with the mount head -- in a backpack. Compress the legs down, slip it in its carrying bag, and you're done.
I'm thrilled with the 101. It really is as finely crafted an instrument as I thought it would be. Everything works smoothly, easily, and intuitively. Stars are indeed, tack sharp and beautiful to behold across the entire field. I love its wide fields; I was able to capture all three stars of the Orion's belt -- and room to spare -- with the 35 Panoptic. I wish I had equally good things to report about planetary and reasonably high-magnified views. Perhaps next time!
I can't wait to do some lunar observing through this scope. It should look fantastic.
Companionship was in the air. We stood around in the lot at Coe for a bit, then enjoyed coffee and hot sandwiches at Lyons, since the recommended deli was closed. We disbanded with fond farewells around 11pm.
Half an hour later, I was excitedly relating the experience to my wife, who smiled, listened patiently, and told me that she might light to see the moon some time. A wonderful end to a great evening.