Observing Report - 10/20/2001

by Jeffrey D. Gortatowsky

I don't think I'll ever rest easy. I must be a telescope makers nightmare. Ever since I received my TMB 180 f/9 from Markus I've had a nagging feeling it was an underachiever. But I have nothing to 'hang my hat on' in that respect. So to speak. Just a nagging feeling. The feeling persists. I don't think I'll ever be happy until I get the chance to go one on one with an 180EDT or even a 155EDFS or 130EDFS. Or RMTC and some expert like Tom comes along and tells me what a wonder scope that is. :)

Last night (the night of October 20/21 2001), I schlepped the 56 pound TMB 180 and my Teleport 180 f/5.6 dob, out to the Orange County Astronomers' private site about 15 miles northeast of Palomar Mountain. High wispy waves of clouds and some haze would dog the skies all night long, but it still was better than not observing, so observing I went. I arrived to find someone else setup on my pad. Yes I paid a substantial sum for that pad. Not just a few hundred dollars. I thought of evicting them (since it was before sunset and that's the rules) but decided there were plenty of other open pads on Jupiter Ridge and left them alone, except for reminding them it was my pad and what a guy I was. LOL!

I quickly setup the AP 900GTO which deftly handles the massive TMB and waited for sunset to arrive to polar align. I quickly had a small crowd of friends drop by and spent more than few minutes talking telescopes and such. The big APO, and the Teleport are both unique in the amateur community and do gather some attention. Amazing what scopes I would (not) have if the market had gone south a year ago when I paid for all my current toys. Dave, Leon, Garth, and I kibitzed for a few minutes while I setup the 900GTO and then nightfall came. I did my 'rough' polar alignment using the AP polar scope. That when well enough and I hefted the beast into the rings. Ugh!

My first target of the night was moon some 4 or 5 days old. I am not going to claim to tell you I even know what I was looking at. If you go back the first paragraph you'll understand I was attempting to compare the collimated views of the Teleport's Zambuto mirror with the big refractor's image. Frankly at the same magnifications of 168x, I thought the big APO's view was slightly better. But there would be other objects tonight where the Teleport held its own. Completely equal in views. Am I disappointed? No. Who wants to pay for the most expensive 7" dobsonian on the planet and find out the view sucks? :)

Well more people came and went (a theme to be repeated all night), and the folks next door were somewhat interested in the big TMB refractor as well as getting down on their knees to view through the collapsible Teleport dob. "Good lord that's an impressive looking scope!", I'd hear again and again. In-between showing people Epsilon Lyrae split in the APO at 180x (and at 90x for that matter), and showing people M57 in both 7.1" scopes at the same 168x magnification, I managed to kill yet another hour. As usual, my plans to observe and document what I see on the moon were going by the wayside. I doubt I'll ever get to leisurely cruise and become intimate with it's features until I have my own backyard where I can start an observing session, and stop an observing session, on a moment's notice. FWIW, M57 looked identical in the big TMB and little Teleport. But tracking is better than no tracking. :)

Clouds thickened a bit so I took a moment or two to knock out a few Binocular Highlights from prior S&T's. Dodging clouds, at 4:09UT (9:09pm PDT) I used my Orion UltraView 10x50s and Gary Seronik's "A Farewell to Summer" to look at orangey Enif and M15. M15 was an obvious fuzzy round patch that along with 2 other stars made a triangle pointing east.

I propped myself against the truck and took a look at another of Seronik's Bino Highlight's, M34 in Perseus. M34 is large loose cluster in the 10x50s that is easy to spot. I found that 6 or 7 stars seemed to form a crisscross pattern and a milky background that implied many many more unresolved stars lurked beyond. I'd forgot how nice a binocular mount is (or more to the point would have been) as even at 10x I found the field shaking annoyingly. I also remembered how the 10x50 Orion 'UltraViews' really are not very "ultra" in their views. A full 40% of the FOV has cometary features. What good is a wide field if a significant portion is not usable?

At around 5:12 UT I turned my attention to Neptune. Using a 7mm Orthoscopic and a 1.7x barlow for 393x, Neptune turned in a nice performance. The real treat was seeing Triton. No doubt about it. I glimpsed the magnitude 13.5 moon at the correct spot which I logged in my log book as approximately a PA of 0 degrees (due north of Neptune). According to SkyTools and Guide 7 the true PA was 353*). I also got an occasional glimpsed of a 'so called' 14th magnitude star that was at a PA of about 45 (GSC 06334-534).

Not to be outdone, I moved on to Uranus at about 5:57UT. I noted a light pale blue disk without any noticeable features. I saw one 'fairly bright' star at a PA of about 60 degrees. And about 50% of the time I could see a tiny pin point of light where, again according to my software at hand, Oberon should have been. Or perhaps Ariel. :) It could have been either as they were both in the same 'area' and nearly the same PA. Given that Oberon is brighter and farther away from the disk, I assumed it was Oberon. Odd as it may seem, the slightly brighter Titania was MIA. Given the conditions of the overall sky, and my reluctances to believe the telescope is performing up to par, I have to admit I was surprise to see the outer planets giving up a moon or two. Come on, Neptune and Uranus are well placed in the early evening skies. Let's hear from you folks on tracking down these far away moons. Or am I alone in that pursuit? Don't answer that! :)

Next at 6:26 UT I turned my TMB towards comet LINEAR 2000/WM1 on the Perseus/Auriga border. At 53x I noted a fairly obvious milky area of light with a very small concentration of light that was either a background star shining through or a stellar like concentration of the nucleus. I felt the comet seemed to be fan shape with the point of the fan on the due east side of the fan. I went to 180x to attempt to see more. At higher power I got the impression it was football shaped and I was not seeing it all when center in the FOV. So I dropped back down to 53x. I felt it was distinctively fan shaped and actually quite a bit longer than I initially might have thought. Maybe 1/2 degree? 1/4? Hard to say as it seemed to petered out into the dense star area.

Finally at 7:45 UT I turned my attention to Saturn. (You'll note that quite a bit of time passes between objects. This a result of many people dropping by, clouds passing, etc.) Saturn presented a good view in the TMB180. I am not ready to say a great view. In fact the Teleport seemed to provide just as good a view with the exception of the really annoying fact that the dob was not tracking and those really annoying diffraction spikes. But nonetheless, the Zambuto mirror provided what, IMO are excellent views "for a dob". :) It took a 6mm ortho and a 1.8x Televue barlow for a magnification of 302x without complaint. But Saturn does move pretty fast across the FOV.

Though I know eyepieces can introduced color, I was still annoyed by the blue on one side, burnt yellow on the other of the views in the TMB. However the skies were a bit hazy so who is to blame, the telescope, the eyepiece (ortho), or atmosphere will have to wait. Saturn was, well, Saturn. The view not 'outstanding' though my visitors occasionally ogled, oooh'd, and ahhh'd. Frankly it was 'okay'. Three rings of course, A, B, and C. A sharply defined Cassini division, but hey, I saw that 30 years ago in a 70mm refractor. The C rings ansae (ends? sharply curved points?) display the darker off color areas I often see. They were varied in intensity but all darker than the rest of the ring. At times I convinced myself I could see some sort of darker area in the A ring. Call it Encke's imagination. Most of these observations were done using a 6mm Pocono Orthoscopic alone for 270x or a 7mm orthoscopic and a AP BARCON 1.7x barlow for 393x. That's ~55x per inch. No image breakdown and one big (but dimmed) Saturn. I guess I shouldn't complain!

The globe was the usual mix of burnt orange and pale white shadings we've all come to know and love. Since calling them Earthtones would be wrong, I guess we can call them Saturntones.

With my time growing short, I wanted to be on the road home by 3am local, I turned the TMB to the Trapezium. Six stars no waiting. But I must say I expect six stars at Anza. It's a rare night for me that I can not see six stars even with a 13cm APO at that site.

What else.... oh yes Jupiter. Well it was 'okay'. I guess again I am waiting to be blown away and was not. Nine bands with the SEB split down the middle like a bad pair of hose. Some 'scalloping was visible in the NEB and SEB along the edges. There was one lousy little dark spot traveling along the NEB. No white ovals, festoons, barges, swirls, etc. Pretty boring. I guess I'll wait for another night with better seeing. Yes we get better nights than those that allow a 7 inch scope to see 6 stars in the trapezium at 180x. I want to see festoons damit! :) Like I did that magical night last year... or was it two years ago... when I could use 30x per inch on my 18 inch dob. Whoooo baby that was a night... 500x in a 18 inch dob is a wondrous, but all too rare, thing!

I took a pile full of hand held digital pics with my CP950. Some look pretty good for a rookie and being handheld. Mostly I just stuck it up to the eyepiece, adjusted the manual shutter speed, and held the shutter button down in continuous exposure until the RAM buffer filled up. Now if I only knew how the heck to process and stack them I bet I have some pretty nice pics of Saturn. Better than all the umpteen times I tried with film cameras and SCTs in the 80s.

Reports | About Reports | TAC | About TAC | Join TAC