Clear, 50, dry, 1/4 moon.
While setting up I figured out that I had a missing screw on one of my spider vanes, turns out that the missing screw was on the end of the diagonal the whole time! Now the spider is much tighter and I think much less wiggly. I fear the diagonal might not be quite correctly placed now. I tried to line it up even underneath the focuser, but I am just not sure this is good enough. I had some trouble stretching out the reach of the collimation screws afterwards, so I am gonna need to revisit this topic.
I had several targets I really wanted to see, but the moon was right in the middle of them, NGC891, Maffei I, Maffei II, IC432. But NGC 891 was really washed out, even with the I3. I picked the dust obscured neighbors as targets, cause of my recent discovery of the I3 being able to pick up a small amount of the near infrared, so I thought this would be a good experiment. The moon being out kaboshed those plans for awhile though.
Met Glenn from SF, he suggested Tau Canis Major which turned out to be a really nice open cluster containing Tau as its brightest member. I definitely endorse a quick visit to Tau Canis Major the next time you want an easy crowd pleaser.
Took a look at the Rotten Egg in M46. For some reason it was much fainter than previously at Dino point. I am thinking it must be finished flaring up. It was more faint than the 1/4 moon could account for. I looked at it again later also, after moon set, it was still fainter than previously. As before it was only visible in the I3, and this time just barely as opposed to the unmistakable brightness increase at Dino.
As the moon set I decided to start star hopping over to Maffei I. I figured even if I ultimately failed, I would at least get familiar with the area in order to find it next time. The Cas/Per area where Maffei I & II are was nearing the NW light bubble and there was some light scud moving around in that area. I started off glancing at M103 thinking I might star hop from there, but then I realized that the Maffei(s) were much closer to the double cluster, so I moved on to there to start. The charts in Uranometria (the only ones I have that show the Maffei(s) were annoying in that the page split right between the double cluster & the Maffei(s). I was having alot of trouble getting oriented for asterism hopping with my normal eyepiece, going back/forth between map and eyepiece. I decided to give up on the regular eyepiece and try star hopping with the I3. The I3 "rights" the view so that instead of the usual Newtonian reversal you get a correctly oriented view. This took me awhile to get used to the star’s magnitudes since the I3 shows alot more stars all in monochrome green, but once I got used to the area, I was able to get my bearings and steadily move to the Maffei I area.
When I finally got to the correct area I noticed Maffei I immediately but I disbelieved because it was so very small. The immediate area is very striking, though small. Maffei I is surrounded by a little asterism of 5 stars almost like a little pentagram. Maffei I itself eastern area of the 5 sided figure, what I could make out of it was all between the triangle formed by the 3 eastern stars. I drew several pictures of the area, starting out at higher magnification than when I found it (120x). Even then the asterism and area was still small so I tried moving to (240x) with a barlow on the I3 15mm. This worked out better than I expected, the sky background was dark enough that interference on the I3 was low. This didn’t reveal much more detail, about the only thing it showed was that what I could see of Maffei I was definitely inside the triangle of eastern stars.
At this point I switched back to my I3 25mm so that I could give a shot at seeing Maffei 2. I did not have high hopes for this, consider Maffei 2’s dimmer surface brightness, When I switched, I noticed that it seemed like I could see almost a feature on the Maffei I nebulosity. Its western half (still inside the triangle) seemed a little brighter than the east. So I drew another picture of this, funny that this "feature" showed up at lower magnification(72x).
I was unable to see Maffei 2, though I am quite sure I found the correct location, it is quite close to Maffei I. I will try again under better conditions.
After rechecking the Rotten Egg I decided to try for a big finish. I noticed Corvus was up above the eastern light pollution and decided to try for an slam dunk sight. I had never seen M104 (live) before, but I knew it would be a good site, especially with the I3 which works so good on edge on spirals (and dark lanes). I found it in binoculars 1st, and then lined it up in the scope relatively easy. With my dark adaptation really off from looking in the I3 at the other targets I didn’t take a long time looking at it with normal eyepieces. It cleary had alot of potential though, the top very bright, and the dark lane clear even with my glance.
With the I3 it was very impressive. Using the 3 stars that surround M104 in a right triangle as a guide: the upper nebulosity spilled over the sides of the triangle, the upper central bulge clearly evident. The dark lane, also stretching over the sides of the triangle, was fantastic. I am trying to think of something from earthly experience to help describe it. It’s like a dark straight highway cutting the nebulosity into 2 unequal pieces. The darkness contrast reminds me of how the Bay looks from an airplane, the glow of the surrounding humans suddenly ending, sometimes in an unnatural contour. A straight edge in this case. I actually noticed the "negative space" of the dark lane before I noticed the nebulosity of the lower half. I definitely look forward to more of M104 in the future. I’ll try and do some comparison drawings.