by Rich Neuschaefer
Between the weather, the seeing and the company, it was a great evening. But, we missed Jay and his 10 AP MC.
The TV-101 and other 4 inch refractor were giving very nice views. Even with the bright, 9 day, moon we could see DSOs with the 4 inchers.
The 8" f/13 D&G is amazing! It really has that "Wow" factor. That is a big scope with very nice optics. The image of Mars was very sharp. It was my first look through a D&G.
The seeing was letting us use 500x or more. I was using a little less than 300x to a little over 500x. At one point Robin let me try his 8mm TV Radians. In the binoviewer they gave about 660x. The image was still sharp.
I could see all the craters shown in Rukl's atlas around the crater Birt and Rimma Birt. Hadleys Rill was well positioned. It was one of the best views I've had of Hadley's. It was great to see rill in the Alpine valley. I could see parts of it in my 180EDT. If the seeing ever got dead still, I feel pretty sure my scope would show virtually the entire rill.
Mars was showing a larger polar cap (Southern?). It was in about the 1 o'clock postion with my star diagonal pointed up. There was a dark feature near that polar cap. There were subtle dark and light shadings in the "lower" half of planet. The other (Northern?) polar cap was also visible but relatively small.
Peter had the Double Double in his AP 10" MC just to check the seeing. It was showing four very clean Airy discs with a first defraction ring. Roland certainly does nice work.
The dovetail plate Robin and his cousin made is a work of art. Strong, rigid but not unnecessarily heavy.