Hearing that at least one person was heading out to catch some sky between the rainstorms, I eagerly packed up my car, whipped up some hot coffee and food, and headed out. I live in a second-story apartment, so I've been trying to minimize the number of trips I have to take downstairs. I take 1 trip with the TeleVue-101 case and Gibraltar ash tripod (in its bag), a second trip with the eyepiece chest and a backpack with the Gibraltar mount and various incidentals. And a third trip with the warm coffee and chair.
I arrived at Montebello a few minutes before 8pm, the whole drive taking me just under 30 minutes. The drive up was fairly clear; there was an indication of at least one area that had been flooded by recent rains, but no landslides or hazards. The designated parking lot was remarkably dry and solid, considering it had just rained earlier that day and ad infinitum previously.
David Kingsley and Phil Chambers were there. This was the third time I've observed with David, and my first meeting with Phil. David had his 7" Starmaster out, and Phil toted binoculars, since his C-11 was unavailable.
Setup took about 10 minutes, but I'm not fully optimized. I think I can get it down to 5 if I had a bit more light and more practice.
Jupiter and Saturn fell into the best part of the Montebello sky: the southern horizon. I balanced the scope, and trained the 101, with the stock 20mm Plossl, on the big planet. I had thought of spending some time with this eyepiece, but it was clearly not suited for planetary views with this scope - and I definitely wanted to spend some time with the planets tonight. So I stuck in the 7 Nagler...
...and was horrified to see color fringes! Not too pronounced but very clearly there. And when I changed to the 4 Radian, they got much worse - to the point of being absolutely blatant. Saturn featured substantially less fringing, but it was both higher in the sky and not as bright as Jupiter. I didn't remember seeing anything like this in the "out the apartment window" trial (which featured some bright lights close by) and on the evening of this scope's first light (about a month ago), so the fact that Jupiter was sitting fairly low in recently stormy skies of moderate seeing probably accounts for most of it. At least, I sure hope so! I wish I had more chances to observe in the near future so I could attempt to make heads or tail of my paranoia. :-)
Fringes aside, Jupiter was a pleasure. I'm finally getting the hang of the Radian - now that I'm stopping out the sliding ring two clicks (rather than shoving my eyeball into the glass), I'm having a much better time with the eyepiece.
The Jovian moons had a quality that made them seem different than stars of similar brightness, but I focused my attention on the planet itself, which featured several clear bands, though I didn't take the time to sketch them - and I think I'd enjoy doing that, if the weather permits. I decided to move to Saturn for some study, because I had recently done some reading on it. The angle of the planet was such that its very tip was just peeking past the inclined rings. The Cassini Division was obvious, as was at least one lighter belt. I also suspected a patch at the extreme "bottom" of the planet, but couldn't be certain.
Scope balance seemed to be reasonable for the 20 Plossl and 7 Nagler, but the 4 Radian is heavy enough to hace required a re-balance. I intentionally didn't use the brass Equalizer 1.25-to-2 inch adapter this session, and found myself rebalancing more than I did previously. I think the best combination for me is to use the standard adapter with the 4 Radian, the brass Schwarzenagler with the 7 Nagler and 20 Plossl, and, of course, no adapter at all for the 35 Panoptic.
Mounted on the Gibraltar, I noted enough vibration at high (planetary) power to cause me to consider investigating dampening pads. I should note that tightening the altitude friction screws considerably dampened vibration, too. But this has the obvious disadvantage of requiring two extra steps when you need to nudge the scope, which -- since this is a planetary viewing exercise -- is often.
David really likes clusters, and was happy to show views of two of his favorite opens: M46, at magnitude 6.5, and M47, at magnitude 4.5. I wanted to try to compare the view in my scope. David took the helm of the 101 with the 35 Panoptic in the barrel, and captured a gorgeous wide field containing both these objects and, as David notes in his own report, two more open clusters in Puppis: NGC 2423 and Melotte 71. All in one stunning field.
Later, David brought over his 8mm-24mm Vixen zoom eyepiece. We tried this on a couple objects, the most illustrative of which was M42, the Great Orion Nebula. What a pleasure to use! The field of view at the 24mm setting definitely feels narrow, but once you get down to about 18mm, it's nice, and only gets better. Contrast improved as you moved down (an interesting effect to experience fluidly), and the eyepiece itself felt good and smooth. It was enormous fun to watch details in the Trapezium smoothly resolve. We discussed that this particular eyepiece is available both from Orion and TelVue, with the differences between them being uncertain.
Time flew. After taking in some other views through the 7" Starmaster, I returned to my scope to find all my eyepieces, and my Starbeam finder completely dewed up. Checking the objective, I saw that it was reasonably dew-free, but the outside of the scope was dripping wet. Yikes! Finderless, I eyeballed the scope back to the planets for a couple more views, and then to the Pleiades, and then finally decided, reluctantly, to call it a night as the objective was losing clarity, too.
15 minutes later, around 10:30, I had warm coffee, leftover pizza, and my binoculars out. Phil shared yummy chocolate-coated cookies while he and David compared notes on how they designed and built their anti-dew devices. Having just experienced "first dew," I listened carefully and asked more than my share of questions.
Moonrise around 11pm eerily corresponded with the better part of the sky clouding over. But before David packed up, he trained his Starmaster on the moon, and let me take a peek. ...And I got my first view of the moon through a telescope since I was a boy. The atmosphere really boiled - most obviously around the edges - but the sight of the vast, incredibly detailed surface absolutely took my breath away. It's been far too long since I'd seen the moon like this! It was a wonderful way to end the evening.