by Phil Chambers
It turned out to be a very pleasant night at MB.
The weather was 2 layers (mid to high 50s) with no wind. Seeing was good early deteriorating to so-so later. I left at about 11.
Set up the newly purchased "swap meet" GP mount with the 5in Orion Mak. The mount was a "fixer upper" needing some screws and small pieces which I replaced or rebuilt this week.
Several folks wanted to look through the Mak so I hurried a bit and never did a real balance and forgot to extend the legs. (Which may be why my back is bothering me this morning). Split the double-double at 90 or so and then pumped it up to 308. Showed airy disks and first diffraction rings but was at or just over the limit of the seeing. Backed off to 220 and had a very clean view.
Mars was showing Sirtis Major (?) even though it is getting pretty small (about 9 arc sec??). Saturn showed pretty well early on but the seeing deteriorated and then got a little better. Leonard T had the "albert" scope (12.5 dob) out and was glimpsing the enke division. (Not the minima). Incidentally, that is the SMOOTHEST dob I have ever touched. You can almost "think" it into position. If the finder didnt slide for balance, you would have to hold it for different size eps.
Bob Baldwin had his new 6 inch Mak there and we compared views. Of course the 6 is brighter at high mags but both scopes showed clean views at 220 or so.
Mostly stuck to planets. Leonard pointed out a shadow transit on Jupiter, the likes of which I have not seen before. The 4 galileian sats were in two pair on different sides of the planet but there was a distinct shadow of a moon almost at the pole. It was "up" in my mak and I think that is correct but not sure. We watched that for quite a while speculating on which moon it was.
Mars, Uranus, and Neptune are in the same area of the sky with Neptune almost in the same fov as Mars. So that was worth some time.
There were roughly 7 or 8 cars there and the company was worth the trip. It was a very pleasant outing.
I am -thoroughly- impressed with that Ultralite dob from Albert H.
The "new" gp performed well. It will be a good platform for the mak and the ss2k.
(and no, I dont have a spell checker on this text-only emailer :-)