by Matt Worthy
As a very green newbie, this will be riddled with questions. Hopefully some of you are willing to oblige the inexperienced :)
21:30--I ran out of lab and up the hill to where my car was parked near the FC baseball field, and hulked my new 8" dob as far as I could away from the parking lot (about 150 yards).
Waiting for darkness, I just watched the planets for a bit. The sliver-moon was huge and beautiful, just sitting on the horizon, too low to show any detail. Saturn likewise was dropping fast, it's rings coming in and out of focus. Venus, WOW! I couldn't even look through the eyepiece it was so bright! Mars was muddled and fuzzy, like an orange at the bottom of a big pool. ok, maybe a cherry :)
Now Jupiter, that was a sight. This was the first time I'd been able to go 240x on *anything*, and it's bands were fantastic.
So it's finally dark enough that I can find Hercules, been wanting to see that dang comet forever (I know, I'm a little late--but better that than never). After some trial and error--and inverting of the chart--I've got a faint blur in my view finder. Same in the eyepiece at 48x. At 96x I think I see a cluster, and at 120x determine that I've found M92 (which is fine with me because I've never seen it!) But this is a relatively bright cluster, no? I'm hoping the reason I had such difficulty viewing it was because of my location (not far from a lit parking lot, looking east over city lights, and still somewhat early?)
Next I believe I did find the comet, at 48x, though focus was difficult to determine. The glow seemed to have a definite center if I looked slightly aside. Higher powers didn't reveal much. Does this sound about right? Again, I'm assuming the not-so-dark skies contributed to the low-contrast image.
Since I was in Hercules I decided to try and find M13, which was no trouble. I got a nice deep image at 120x, my only wish being that I had a wider FOV and better eye-relief. Someone tell me about 2" eyepieces, advantages and disadvantages? Would I get a much greater swath of sky with one? (the XT8 is 1200mm, f/5.9) The formula for fov might be helpful, too.
My last, and ultimately futile, attempt for the evening was the Ring Nebula. This left me rather disheartened since it is supposedly so easy to find. However, I've rationalized that it was too low over the brightly lit eastern sky. What should I look for... "between two bright stars in Lyra," is that right? But which ones!?
Okay, I've taken enough of your time with questions I'm sure are more than elementary for most of you. Thanks for listening, and I'll be looking forward to getting an opportunity in dark skies soon.