by Jamie Dillon
Hmph. While Paul down there and Richard up there were having fun with their narrow spyglasses, I'd hauled Felix out for a session.
(Felix is a Celestron 11" f/4.5 Dobs with a primary made by Discovery. Last night I just had a 25 Celestron SMA and a 16mm Koenig out.)
Wednesday night at bedtime I spotted Arcturus out the bathroom window as I was turning in. Went outside to look and sure enough it had cleared, looked steady, with something like a 5.0 limiting mag. Hmmmm. So last night I was rubbing my hands.
The sky was murky down our way, something short of 4.0 for transparency. Could see about 9 stars in Leo. Plus the seeing was swimming. M37 came and went, same for M35. Took jiggling the scope to get a good view of M65 and M66 together.
Was just like that Woody Allen joke about the two ladies having lunch in this restaurant. One says, "The food in this place is terrible." "Yes," says the other lady, "and the portions are so small."
But the bright side of last night's observing was at sunset, when I homed in on Venus, which was a breathtaking crescent. Hollered to Jo and Liam who came out and looked and were mystified and intrigued at Venus being in phase. Oh the wonder and splendor of the universe.
But back to the point of this little diversion, that with less aperture and a longer focal length, the refractor kind of thing, given the swimming seeing, I might have seen more, split Castor, that kind of entertainment.
Tomorrow night, even though there's this weather-fu that Mr Wagner alluded to, to whit: "Friday...Mostly sunny with increasing clouds by afternoon... "
I'm very taking the winter approach and heading out to Dino on spec. Take the aperture out for a spin.