Mars, hot tub observing, and Saturn. A first light report.

Michelle Stone

I have read that these scopes are very quirky about having a good collimation for good performance. They are a bit tricky to tune. But after 10 minutes or so, I got it pretty good with a low power eyepiece. They say that they come out of collimation in transit from Japan. I can confidently state that this scope was never collimated. The collimation screws were tight and it was so far out of whack that the finder scope could not be adjusted to point in the same direction. I'm going to want to go through the collimation exercise again at high power on a night that isn't as cold as it was tonight..... and one when I'm more physically capable.

I used Binoviewers and 19 panoptics which put my effective magnification at about 260X. I have been using an FLD filter on Mars this year with very good results and this too was in my optical train. There was still a lot of moisture in the air from two days of rain. It had in fact just cleared before dark here. And the dew was significant. I was able to see better resolution than I have seen in some time on the planet even though I could see significant haze in the FOV along with severe diffraction spikes (due to the heavy air moisture). The seeing conditions were suprisingly steady.

The features were very obvious. The dark band connecting the areas between Mare Sirenum, Aonius Sinus, Protei Regio, and Aurourae Sinus looked like a big smile. In fact, my husband caled it a happy face. I could also clearly see the dark region near Achillis Pons. The view was not exceedingly sharp however and I'll have to wait to see if it was a problem with air moisture or collimation or both. I was a bit disappointed here but I'm not willing to blame it on the scope just yet. It was still a pretty impressive view. I haven't had a view of Mars this good since the year at OSP when there were fires.... it's been a few years.

I also was able to resolve a problem that I've had with the Mars Previewer software for some time. While using my SV80S refractor on Mars, it would take me some concentrated effort to detect the darker regions on the planet. I would sketch them and then come in to identify them with this software package. I could never get them to line up and I believed that it was due to my lack of seeing them correctly. With the bigger aperture tonight, I had increased resolution and can now clearly state, that I've been right all along. The features as shown in the software are shown farther south than in reality (at least for this observer).

I left the filter and scope mounted and shared some quality hot tub observing time with my husband. Somewhere around 2 AM, we pointed the scope back up towards Saturn. By then, there was a significant amount of ice that had formed all over everything. The ringed planet was beautiful and I could see lots of detail although I was somewhat disappointed in the clarity of the image. The huge diffraction spikes had diminished with the loss of water vapor in the air but there was still enough to leave final judgement of the scopes performance characteristics to another session. I did not notice a significant change in color for the planet with the FLD filter there. Even with the fuzzy characteristic of the image, it was a beautiful sight to see the rings cross the planet bulge and see them cleanly deliniated from the planet's surface.

What a treat it was to have my husband home for the holidays and start it off with a very fun observing session! I'll just have to do another "first light observing report" again when the conditons are better and I have the scope finely tuned.

Michelle