by Craig Colvin
I am going to convert it into a traditional truss dob, but in the mean time I had to get it out and try it. After spending Tuesday night unsuccessfully trying to collimate it due to the funky Novak secondary holder, I disassembled the diagonal holder on Wed, made some modifications and got it collimated for that evening in my backyard in Almaden. The transparency was only fair Wednesday night but it was enough that I got a taste for how 18" of aperature compares to my XT10. In a word WOW! I concentrated mainly on eye candy and objects I've looked at often with my XT10 such as M81/82, M42, M51, M3, M104, Jupiter, and Saturn. They were all very bright and an amazing amount of detail compared to what I am used to. I then just pointed into the middle of the Virgo cluster and panned around with my mouth hanging open. I was like a little kid on Christmas morning, smiling ear to ear as I jumped around from faint fuzzy to faint fuzzy.
The fog started rolling in after about an hour of observing, so I had to call it a night. Now I can't wait to get it to a dark site. Just have to get it rebuild so I will be able to transport it. Did I mention that it's big? :)
Posted on sf-bay-tac Apr 09, 2004 22:49:50 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.1 Jul 10, 2004 16:11:45 PT