Using Santa's Goodies

by Jeffrey D. Gortatowsky

Location	Fullerton, CA
Time	5:00-5:30UT 12/26/2001 (9:00-9:30 PST 12/25/2001)
Temp	60's (F) Winds: Calm
Seeing	3 out 5
LM	The sky was orange, whadya think? About +2 if I was lucky.
Tele	180mm f/5.6 Teleport Dob
Oculars	3-6mm Nagler and 16 T5 Nagler

My wife Kim and I were testing a few new goodies Santa brought down the chimney. We setup outside the condo with the complex's lights shining everywhere . So we were watching the transit of the spot formerly known as 'Great Red' through the 7" Teleport and the Santa Goodie Nagler 3mm-6mm zoom. From the heart of light polluted Orange County we had a pretty good view. Kim's never seen Jupiter before and she picked out the low contrast GRS at 6mm (168x) calling it "A bubble in the upper big belt." (SEB). Cool! Then she asked, "And what's those 4 bright stars lined up? Moons?" <g> "And that dark spot over the bottom belt, what's that?" I hadn't noticed the dark oval in the NEB, but she did. And her eyesight is generally terrible.

We went on to Saturn where, like most newbies, she gasped and said "No Way! That's painted on, right?" <g> We picked out Cassini's Division and 4 moons. We had fun zooming from 168x to 201x (5mm) which is about what conditions would allow. Then we went on to the Trapezium. Under the "Orange Skies" of Orange County M42 was a meager fuzz and totally not worth writing about, but I picked out all six components of the Trapezium in moments of steady seeing at 201x. Here my experience pulled away as Kim could not see the E and F components, yet I knew E was easy and if one knew where to look, F was there.

All in all we had a nice 30 minutes or with the new 16mm Nagler Type 5 and Nagler 3mm-6mm Zoom. The Teleport is an expensive, but amazing box. In 6 minutes I was observing and it cools quickly. My new Starbound chair made using the diminutive dob a pleasure. The mirror in that sucker just gives and gives.

Santa also came with an adjustable LED flashlight, Deep Map 600, and Richard Berry's book on Image Processing.