by Michael Swartz
Later I was joined by 10 or 15 other observers. Everyone was friendly, conversational and would roam about conversing and sharing views and opinions.
I got involved in a crazy eyepiece comparison between the TV 31nagler and a TV 41panoptic. I thought I had brought over my 41 panoptic but only after four of us looked through a pair of 31 naglers did we finally realize that we couldn't figure out why they looked so similar until we looked at them with a light to see which one was which. Because suprisingly they even felt the same. So after a brief embarrassed appology I went and got my real 41mm panoptic and we compared views. There was a very noticable difference this time instead of just an imagined one. At one point I actually had a 31mm in each hand and was changing them again and again trying to see the difference. And I actually thought I saw something but I wasn't sure. The 31 and 41 are different though. The 41 does have a nice view, good contrast and nice images out to the edge, but the 31 has a nicer contrast. I am not sure if it's because of the magnification or not but the background sky was a little darker and showed more texture. That was kind of funny.
Later in the evening plenty of good views of Mars were enjoyed. I finally left around 1:00am.
It was a good night.