"dinky" scopes and Wednesday night at Blue Canyon

by Brian Zehring

I actually spoke to Rick at Starmaster before I bought the 22" and was on the waiting list for a 20" Zambuto but he didn't think it would be ready until at least May or June. In the meantime I found the 22" and it was a few thousand less than a new 20" and figured what the hell. I think Zambuto and Pegasus both make a great mirror, I had the chance to look through both before I bought the 22". Rumor has it for the right price you can pick up a 24" zambuto, but with GOTO and all the good stuff you're looking about $16k!!!!

Had a great night Wednesday with Jim Ster. Was in short-sleeved shirt until almost one a.m. which was nice and after some collimation issues the telescope worked great. Goto was almost perfect with a hap-hazard 2 star aligment. Looked at so many things I can't even remember them all. A few standouts were the Swan and Ring nebula with more detail than I can remember ever seeing and an easily visible central star. Thanks Jim for the use of the eyepieces and barlow. I stuck around til about 3:30 waiting for a good view of Saturn and M-42. Very nice! I was kind of surprised to pull into the parking lot at BC and have about 30 people there with telescopes on Wednesday night, with the moon out. Turned out to be a Sierra College Astronomy class.

I really enjoy star-hopping and looking for those 15th magnitude galaxies and have always thought of the GOTO as cheating. I mainly got the GOTO because I like the tracking feature. What I found was I could use starrynight pro to identify some faint galaxies and then punch in coordinates of a brighter object nearby and then starhop around all I want. Seemded like the best of both worlds.