I was all set to go somewhere yesterday, then it fogged/clouded up, then later at night it was mostly clear. So I ended up on the balcony avec pronto.
Stayed out late enough to see the teapot rising above my southern view blocking hill. I didn't even bother with a map, I just pointed and looked around, I am not sure what exactly I was looking at, there was so much to choose from. While it may be a sin to look blindly, I figure I am only going to get 1 chance to look at new areas without knowledge of the brighter goodies. 'personal-discovery" at least.
another way I was playing around, was to use this night vision monocular I borrowed from a friend to look at things. At Dino last weekend before I left, I used the monocular to look at several things, and was pleasantly surprised by the view. There's not alot of magnification, so you end up with a light enhanced view of the sky, at a "naked eye like" scale.
NV monocular, Dino:
More from my balcony:
anyway, I realize all these things are visible naked eye to varying degrees the darker the site/conditions you get. I feel its a way to grab back some of the sky thats been lost to the light, almost a simulated "naked eye" view.
I had another highlight from the balcony with the pronto. around a month ago, I had been desperately trying to see the Ring nebula late one night. I was able to detect it with the pronto, but could not see the shape. I tried alot of combinations, pronto/I3/barlows/UHC filter.
Last night I pointed a pronto/I3 25mm/Parks ALP filter combo at it and was pleasantly surprised to see the Ring shape pop right out. It was really tiny, but the Ring was unmistakable. The magnification was roughly 19x.
The I3/ALP combination works really well. I was able to see the Ring shape, when I took off the ALP, but it wasn't as pretty. Much less contrast, brighter green background.
I am not sure why I couldn't see the Ring shape last month, maybe 20 degrees difference in the sky made the difference, maybe I had the I3 focused better, I don't know. Using the I3 makes M57 lose that smoky/floating quality, you get looking at it normally, but just seeing it all with the pronto from light polluted balcony is better than not.
If anyone knows specifically what the light curve on the Parks ALP is, I would really appreciate that information. I know it is similiar to the Lumicon Deep Sky, but I really would like to know the specifics, so that I could talk myself out of buying the Deep Sky.