by Robin Casady
Well, it has been awhile since I've done much astronomy. Between work, weather, and health it just hasn't happened much this year. Part of it was that I was expecting the Astro-Physics Maksutov-Cassegrain in spring. So, all summer I was thinking that I'd take care of other things before the scope arrived and then spend time on astronomy when it arrives.
Anyway, the OTA arrived Thursday of last week. None of my mounts are heavy enough for it, so I took it to a friend's (Arthur) house that night to try it on his G-11. I took the scope over around 5:00 and then drove 12 miles to the mouth of Carmel Valley to run some errands. As I headed towards the coast I met the fog racing down the Valley like a mad banshee in search of a new scope. I thought perhaps it would do what it usually does and stop around Garland Park -- just after my house -- and not make it to Arthur's. No such luck. First light postponed.
Friday was scheduled for rain, Saturday for wind, Sunday Arthur was working up at MIRA's Oliver Observatory at Chews Ridge. Monday was free.
The only place to set up at Arthur's was a redwood deck that was recently completed. It has a hatch to a concrete block where he plans to install a pier, but it is not large enough for the G-11 tripod. So, we were stuck using the deck. I wasn't too worried because I often observe from a second story redwood deck at home.
At about 7:30 PM we set up, aimed the rear of the OTA at the sky and removed the back cover to allow the mirror to cool. This scope has some unusual cooling design features. One is that the back of the scope has a removable cover that exposes some very large cooling ports. We did not power up the two cooling fans. The mirror is aluminized on the back for better heat radiation.
Sometime after 8:00 we put the cover back on and pointed it towards Epsilon Lyre. Seeing wasn't great, but no problem splitting them. On to M57 which looked bright and contrasty. No sign of a central star.
Next was M15. A very nice view, but our socks were still in place. Distinct stars could be seen all the way into the center. At 370x it was still a nice view - not a ball of mush.
With a 35mm Panoptic we looked at the double cluster, or parts of each. A pretty view. The contrast made it look like it sparkled. What I mean is that it looked like glitter on jet black -- not that anything was blinking.
We looked at a few other deep sky objects, including a yin/yang spiral galaxy. With averted imagination the spiral arms could be seen.
The impression so far was that it was doing nicely for 10" but the deep sky views wouldn't justify the price.
An oak tree was between us and Saturn so we headed inside for a cup of tea to wait for Saturn to get over its shyness.
At around 11:00 PM it had peeked out from behind the leaves so went to give it a look. Using a Zeiss binoviewer with Zeiss 10mm and 16mm orthos gave us approx. 464x and 390x. A slight breeze had come up. This was not good with the deck. Saturn was jumping around in the field, and it was going in and out of focus with the seeing. In spite of this, the Cassini division was amazingly clear and contrasty. The crepe ring was very distinct. The difference in brightness and texture between the A and B rings was stunning. No, claims will be made here concerning any kind of Encke. The planet surface showed nice gradations.
We tried turning off the mount to see if some of the bouncing was due to the G-11's motors. Oddly enough, this made things worse. It seemed like some sort of harmonic was being set up that caused a vibration. Adjusting the counterweights didn't help. Oh well.
When Jupiter sprung out from behind the oak we gave it a look. Holy festoon, Batman! In spite of being able to see the motion of my heartbeat being transferred through the deck, up the mount, and into the eyepiece, it was quite a view. :-) I wasn't taking notes or trying to do any serious observing -- too rusty for that. I do recall a very large festoon coming down from the NEB (I think) and some very tiny white spots blinking in and out of view in the SEB. There were lots of other great features to see, but those are the things that stuck in my memory. In the good moments it was quite a spectacular site.
If the weather is good, I plan to take it up to the MIRA star party at Chews Ridge this weekend. Hopefully the G-11 will do better on terra firma. I am concerned that wind might be a problem up there.