Saturday night at Montebello

by Michael Swartz

I took my new Plettstone 18" up to Montebello last night with my friend Gary Gechlick who brought his ultra-portable Televue TV85. We got there just after dark, set up and stayed until almost 1:00am. And although the seeing was a little soft it was dark enough, warm and dry.

We saw lots of nice clusters, nebula, a few galaxies and some planets. The treat of the night for me was being able to get a very solid, clear view of both Neptune and Uranus. The disks were so clear and the colors were very vivid. It was awesome to see them and contemplate how far away they were. Mars was nice too. It finally got high enough after midnight to be able to see surface features and the polar cap. I used the Televue Mars filter to bring the features out.

The Argo/Navis goto/tracking was so smooth and everytime we hit goto the target was somewhere in the field of view. It worked really well and it was really fun to just jump from one object to another and be able to enjoy seeing so many things.

I tried out a new paracor and the Televue 1.25 dioptrix. I really like the paracor although my scope doesn't need it so much. But with it, the stars were sharp to the edge. The dioptrix which is designed to correct for astigmatism is tricky to use and I'm not really sure if I like it yet. I need more time to play with it to really appreciate how to use it correctly.

There were maybe 15 scopes there, lots of great conversation, and all in all it was a great night of observing.

New Plettstone 18" in use:
http://www.starpartyguy.com/images/scopes/observing1a.jpg

Posted on sf-bay-tac Sep 25, 2005 11:20:15 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 12, 2006 16:11:00 PT