by James Ster
Wow. What a fine evening. I'd like to say thanks to all of you who came up and had fun with Bill and I at HGO last night. Allan, CK, Art, Brad, and Harold with his guests. In addition to first light for Bill's new TV-101, a truly fine instrument, the evening was spent trying out various eyepieces against one an other to see what we did or did not care for about each one in the 4 different scopes available. Allan brought his 18" (?) truss dob, CK had his Intes Micro MN56 5" f/6 Maksutov Newtonian, Brad his ETX125, and Art with his big cannon, the 16" Starfinder.
Harold spent his evening with some guest in the observatory doing some ccd imaging with the 12" LX200. Seeing was terrific, but transparency suffered from what appeared to be bands of high thin clouds that blew through occasionally, but never leaving us viewless. The moon was setting around midnight and unfortunately for Bill, in an effort to not become one of those poor astronomy widower's, headed home to his expecting wife. I must say that I truly enjoyed Bill's generous offer to share first light with his TV-101 and I know every one who was there will agree that it is truly a fine piece. Thank you Bill.
Harold bailed around 10:30 or so, and the rest of us stayed about an hour after the moon set at at midnight. I replaced Bill's TV-101 on my Stellarvue eq. mount with my TV-85, not too bad of a replacement, and found a couple of favorites before taking off for home for a good night's sleep.
While I'm at it, I must take this opportunity to mention those infamous Stellarvue 12 x 60 bino's. While fumbling around in the moon drenched sky, looking for familiar objects to train the scopes on, the bino's really offered a spectacular view of the heavens. While mounted on top of Art's camera tripod and bino adapter, I trained them on Jupiter just as it rose above the trees just east of the observatory. I couldn't believe the sight. It was incredible. All 4 moon were clearly visible as pinpoints of light around Jupiter's waist. As well as the rings around Saturn, Orion Nebula, Andromeda and the Double Cluster.
The point of all this is to say that bino's are a very wonderful tool to have in your astronomy tool box. I think it's just as important to have a good pair of bino's as it is to have a good refractor and a large reflector. Top it all off with killer eyepieces, nice skies and great company and you'll have everything needed to enjoy the heavens. We sure did.