Observing: TV85 at Whiskey Hill

Imagine fancying yourself a music lover who has been listening to Mozart, Coltrane and Deep Purple for years on a cheap monophonic cassette player. Then one day, you find yourself with a top-notch stereo and a whole new world unfolds. That's how I feel after spending an hour or so tonight under some unbelievably dark skies out at Linda's folks' place.

We pulled in just after dusk and it was already dark enough to see the Milky Way straight overhead. I waited an hour or so for it to get seriously dark then John and I set up the TV85 in John's stone house (which is without a roof, thankfully). After we turned off a few lights out by the livestock and covered a window with a sheet of plywood to block the light from the house we got down to some observing.

The dark lanes through Cygnus were not just visible, but actually dark. Incredible. My first target was the Double Cluster in Perseus. Simply beautiful - two clumps of diamonds amid a background of stars that I couldn't even imagine seeing back home. M13 was next, and even with the TV85 I was able to resolve some of the outer stars of the cluster. Ditto M15. The Andromeda galaxy (M31) was still just a smudge, but it was a bigger smudge than I've become accustomed to seeing with the small scope under brighter skies. Albireo split into it's bright blue and yellow pair with the LVW 13mm. Dead batteries in the Starbeam finder kept me from picking off more objects, as it took a bit of effort to put the easy stuff into the FOV.

Unfortunately it was short lived - the Milky Way quickly began to fade, the dark lanes disappeared, and the sky brightened as the Moon rose in the East. How cruel the gods are. We didn't stay out much longer, but I wasn't planning on an all-night session - I just wanted to get my feet wet, so to speak, to get an idea what it's like out at Whiskey Hill. I'll be watching the weather forecasts for next weekend which will be right around New Moon (+/- a couple of days).

Observing: Imaging the Moon & Jupiter with DSI

Checked the 40D + MaxView DSLR rig on the Antares 127mm again, this time with the TV32mm Plossl just to see if my focusing problem is caused by the Celestron eyepiece. It isn't - the same deal. I'm wondering if it isn't as simple as a field-flatness issue with the Antares that might be corrected with a add-on field flattener. Next time: TV85.

I packed in the 40D and broke out the DSI for the first time since I bought it. I just tested it with the new version of Nebulosity (2.0) in the living room yesterday to get comfortable with it, though I still need to read and absorb the Nebulosity manual.

First target: The Moon. With no idea what I was doing I captured a few shots of the area around Tycho and the southern highlands. These were single exposures, not stacks, and I used the Tele Vue 2.5x Powermate to bump up the magnification. I think I'm going to like this DSI thingy...:


On to Jupiter, now getting low in the west. Had a bit of a time focusing, so need to play with the DSI/Nebulosity combo a bit more to make sure I'm using it correctly. This was the best of the 6 attempts. I shot 100 frames, used Nebulosity to demosaic, normalize and convert to TIFF, then stacked the best frames in Lynkeos. Finally brought the image into Photoshop for some level adjustments and a tiny bit of sharpening. Still not what I want, but an improvment over previous attempts...

Observing: Moon & Jupiter

First time out with the Antares 127mm since I upgraded the focuser to the GSO Crayford. A 9-day old waxing gibbous Moon was the target, and the scope did a fine job with the Minus-V filter in place. So nice, in fact, that I decided to grab the camera and see whether the new focuser helped with the focusing problem I had last time I tried to do some imaging. Alas, it did not - once again every shot was out of focus at the edge of the frame while the center was in focus. This occurs using with the MaxView DLSR adapter and a 40mm Plossl eyepiece mounted to the diagonal, which I think is the same combination I used previously. Next time out I will try it without the diagonal, but I don't think it will make any difference. Oddly, I don't notice any focusing issues when observing visually. I should also try it with the TV85 just to see whether it can be narrowed down to the scope or the imaging chain. But not tonight, I'm tired and don't want to stay out late screwing around in the dark with expensive toys.

Cropping away all the out-of-focus stuff, and I got a pretty good shot of Copernicus, Eratosthenes, and just between them, the faint outline of Stadius - a "heavily flooded crater with incomplete low walls" (Rukl).

I was going to pack it in and started dismounting the camera when I saw Jupiter begging for attention. Slewed the scope over and snapped a few shots, none of which really can be confused with Christopher Go's work, but hey... I tried. Here's the best of the bunch, with a little post processing in Aperture and Fireworks:

OK, so if you squint it looks a little like Jupiter...

Lessons learned:

• The new Crayford makes it much easier to focus, but I really need to get a grip on the two tension adjustment screws.
• The 40D's live view makes focusing a snap, especially being able to see a 10x live preview.
• Something is terribly wrong with my imaging chain. Need to sort that out before it gets cold.
• Aligned the Sirius on Arcturus, Nunki and Alpheratz, all three pretty far from each other. Very good GoTo, at least near 0 deg declination. Had to hunt around a bit to find M13, though. Is this a leveling issue?
  
• I want a C8.

Oh, I almost forgot - the EZ Finder Deluxe is the nuts! It took longer to find the Allen key needed to align it than it did to do the actual alignment. I wonder if ScopeStuff or somebody makes an adapter that will let me mount it on the TV85, so I can 86 that infernal Starbeam finder once and for all.

Update 10/9: I squeezed some semi-usefulness out of another out-of-focus image:

Way to go, Orion!

Just after I purchased the Sirius mount, Orion upgraded the SynScan hand controller. Among other things, the new HC allows firmware updates via the net, and has improved tracking and fine-tuning of Go-To objects. Sounds like a worthwhile upgrade, so I emailed Orion customer service a few days ago to find out what the upgrade path is for an existing Sirius owner. Their response: There is no upgrade path, other than buying a new hand controller at full price of $395.00.

Frankly, this downright sucks. I'm not your typical the bitching-and-moaning type of consumer - for example, I spent $1,200 for a defective Sirius mount, then had it replaced by what was clearly a repacked unit complete with scratches and chips, and didn't complain about it. Nor do I expect something for nothing - I had to pay Celestron a nominal fee for a similar hand controller upgrade back when I had my N8GPS, and did so gladly. But full price?!?!? Wrong answer!

I've got a better idea: I never buy another Orion product again, and they can kiss my ass.

Thanks for listening. That is all.

Observing: Sirius & TV85

Time to see how the Sirius does now that I can actually see Polaris to do a proper polar alignment. Been a while since I used this mount but it went pretty easily without me having to dig out the manual - good thing, too, because I have no idea where that is.

At around 9pm it was just dark enough to see Polaris through the polar alignment scope. As we've learned, this must be done with the power off because the illuminating LED is worse than useless. Without leveling the tripod, I just dialed in the mount and fired it up. Picking alignment stars was a snap; Alpheratz, Fomalhaut and Vega worked for me. Then it put every object I tried into the FOV of the LVW 13mm. Life is good.

Not a serious observing session, just wanted to get used to the EQ mount again before I break out the 5-inch and the cameras and see if I have better luck with imaging than I've had so far with visual here in Waco. Had a look at Jupiter, M15, M22, M27, M57 - none very exciting in the small scope. Open clusters fared better; the Double Cluster (with LVW 42mm) and Pleiades (with LVW 22mm) were nice, while M29 was... small. The batter pack started running dry around 11:30 so I packed it in.

Things to do:

• Generate some new observing lists in Astroplanner.
• Upgrade to new version of Nebulosity and get the DSI going.
• Talk to neighbors, assure them that I'm not a weirdo who stands around in the backyard at night waiting for the mother ship to return and take me back to my home planet.
  

About The New Location

Robinson, TX is located south of the Waco border in Central Texas, about halfway between Dallas/Ft. Worth to the north and Austin to the south. My house is in a fairly new development of duplexes and town houses (so new that in Google Maps, it's shown as an empty field).

According to the Light Pollution Map, we're a solid 5 on the Bortle Scale:

"Milkyway washed out at zenith and invisible at horizon. Many light domes. Clouds are brighter than sky. M31 easily visible. Limiting magnitude about 5.6 to 5.9. "

That's fairly generous, 'cause we had a new moon this week and I was barely able to see M31.

Click to enlarge

But good news abounds. Linda's folks live northeast of the city (Whiskey Hill Rd. on map, a 4 on the Bortle scale) and I know from casual naked-eye observing there that it's significantly darker - to the point where I can easily see the Milky Way down past Perseus and the Cygnus rift with eyes barely dark adapted and house lights on. This is encouraging. Also, the Central Texas Astronomical Society has some dark sites, including the Paul and Jane Meyer Observatory maybe an hour west of Waco, right on the edge of Bortle-3 territory. Further west is darker still (Bortle-2, mag. 7.5!). I think I'm going to love living in Texas.

Observing: First Light in Texas

After a month in Texas I got around to unpacking some of the astro gear and decided to have a quick peek from the backyard. The new abode is just south of Waco and barely 1/2-mile off I-35 so the sky is fairly soupy. Still, at zenith it is just a bit worse than Lake Wallkill - I can see Milky Way through Cygnus and M31 is faint naked-eye. The big trade-off is the trees: there ain't none here! So the southern sky which was hidden from me for 6 years is now visible, albeit over my roof, and a clean shot to the north means my polar alignment scope on the Sirius mount is no longer a vestigal organ.

But for tonight, it was the QRP rig - TV85 on the Porta mount. Went out around 9pm CST while Jupiter, hovering above the teapot in Sagittarius, was still high above the rooftops. Looked good with the LVW 8mm (75x), better (as always) with the LVW 13mm + 2.5x Powermate (115x). Soon turned my attention to globulars in Sag, objects that I've never seen (at least not since I've been keeping track of what I observe). M22 was faint, with almost no resolution of stars in the cluster. M28 was even worse, just a round fuzzy spot. I didn't stay out long, was in before 10:30

So we're not much better off than Northern NJ as far as dark skies is concerned, but at least I can see something below 50 degrees elevation now. The good news is, Linda's parents are far enough out in the country that I can see the Cygnus rift in the Milky Way without even letting my eyes dark-adapt, and I plan to tote the TV85 along with me when we visit.

Nov. 2007 - Oct. 2008: The Lost Year

Wow, has it really been a year since my last post?

Lost time is a popular topic in science fiction and UFOlogy, but my lost year is much easier to explain: damn near all of my free time for the past year (longer, actually) was spent renovating a house in Closter, NJ that, in the end, I never moved into. After all our work, Linda and I ended up moving to the great Republic of Texas, where the skies are dark and the first two Constitutional Amendments are still in effect.

Lock and load!

Holmes Sweet Holmes

Well, I'll be damned! There it was: Comet Holmes, bright and big in the binoculars last night. With naked eye, it looks like a star with no fuzzy coma - at least not to my eyes. Will keep an eye (or two) on this one over the next few weeks...

Meade DSI

Took a drive up to High Point Scientific today and came home with a DSI - at the $99 blowout price I couldn't pass it up. Stark Labs has Mac OS X software that will work with the DSI - Nebulosity for imaging, and PHD for guiding - so this should prove interesting. PHD will work with the NexImage as well, I think.

Also picked up a pair of slo-mo extension knobs for the Porta because I'm tired of reaching blindly for the Az adjuster and grabbing the focuser instead.

Had a look at the Celestron C6, I think this is the perfect SCT to supplement my two refractors. I just don't know whether to buy the OTA by itself, or get the SE package and have the NexStar mount as a grab-n-go-to platform to use with the TV85. I was hoping to check out a LightBridge dob but there were none on display.

Incredibly, I managed to leave the store down only $142.00. But I shall return...

Observing: Full Moon

An unseasonably clear night afforded me an opportunity to observe the full moon with the TV85, LVW13 and Powermate 2.5 (with lunar filter, o'course) for 115x magnification.

Once again I was awed by the TV85; not a hint of color at the edge where the bright moon met black space. There was little turbulence and the scope just snapped into focus, even at 115x with all the touchy-shakies. The scope is a champ, best damned astro-thing I ever bought!

As for the Moon, I was drawn to the western limb near Oceanus Procellarum: Balboa's rim was prominent against the black of space (Rukl chart 17). Further south, Schuller marked the start of the long mountain range Montes Cordillera (Rukl 39), running south, bowing eastward and offering a glimpse of Montes Rook (Rukl 50) at the very edge of the lunar limb. Both of these ranges encircle Mare Orientale (which is just out of view) as part of a large impact basin shown in this Lunar Orbiter photo taken in 1967. Great stuff!

Up north, the area above Plato (Rukl 3) was interesting - several craters near the limb - Carpenter, Anaximenes, Philolaus, Poncelet - and along the edge Pascal/Brianchon. Clouds moved in around 10:40.

A lunar eclipse starts at 4am, and the moon will set in totality just before 6am - no way I'll be up that early.

Orion EZ Finder Deluxe

This thing's been sitting around for months. Finally, I broke out the drill...

Observing: Sirius Shakedown

Sirius Mount + TV85 tonight. Tried something different this time: I chose 3-star alignment, then tweaked the mount's RA & dec to center on the first star (Altair), then completed alignment with Vega and Arcturus. Not perfect, but it it puts M29, M27 and M57 in the FOV of my LVW13! Beats the hell out of the so-called polar alignment scope which is a joke. I think this is the first time I've ever gotten decent alignment with the Sirius without multiple attempts (and associated hair-pulling and colorful language).

The Sirius/TV85 combo is really great. Even on the deck, I see hardly any shake while focusing or moving around. With tripod legs fully extended, the eyepiece is a little to high for comfortable seating on my trusty kitchen stepladder, but I think it would be perfect if I had real observing chair, so that's item #2 on my wish list, just after the camera adapter and accessories needed to properly connect the DSLR to the TV85.

GOTO'd through the usual suspects. Found that the farther west, the worse the GOTO accuracy. M13 and M92 completely out of the field of the LVW13, but easily found by slewing a bit. Left the rig pointed at M57; returned a half-hour later to find gone from the FOV. There's clearly work still to be done. Before breaking down for the night I turned off the power and tried to spot Polaris through the alignment scope. Not a chance through the tree.

Miscellaneous: Temp at 10pm: 70 deg F, 53% humidity, winds calm from the South. Orion 2" diagonal works like a champ. Whining noise from mount that was very noticeable during indoor tests isn't heard at all outside. Marked the position of the tripod vibration pads on the deck for future setup.

Observing: Back in the Saddle...

First night out with a scope since last September, using the TV85 + Porta for a brief viewing session. I'm happy to report that M29 is still there. I didn't stay out long, conditions weren't that great and humidity was getting bad.

I had all of the gear in storage at the Closter house, brought it all back to Lake Wallkill today with the intention of finally equipping the Antares 127 with the reticle finder and giving the 'new' Sirius mount a full shakedown, as I only had it outside once shortly after receiving the replacement unit from Orion.

M3 Blinky-Blinky

This is amazing.
From Joel Hartman (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics): "RR Lyrae often have amplitudes of variation as high as 1 magnitude in V, and even higher in B. The RRab stars (fundamental mode pulsators) are the most numerous and have periods of roughly half a day. The RRc stars (first overtone pulsators) have periods of roughly a third of a day. What's more, because they are among the brightest stars in a globular cluster, they're actually very conspicous. If you were to watch them over the course of a night you would see quite a beautiful show, with the RR Lyrae blinking "on" and "off" like Christmas lights." (h/t APOD)

Sun Pillar

Sun Pillar - (meteorology) A luminous streak of light, white or slightly reddened, extending above and below the sun, most frequently observed near sunrise or sunset; it may extend to about 20° above the sun, and generally ends in a point. A visual phenomenon created by the reflection of light from ice crystals with near horizontal parallel planar surfaces.

I photographed this sun pillar this evening from Pine Island, NY, as the sun set behind Mt. Pochuck. No photo can do it justice - it was much more visible and brilliant to the naked eye, like a searchlight.

Antares 127mm Project: New Stuff

The holidays came and went, and despite relatively mild weather I've pretty much wussed out when it comes to observing with the hardware. However I have been stepping outside for short bursts to gaze upon the winter constellations (Orion, Auriga, Gemini) naked-eye from the deck. Model trains have been a distraction from astronomy lately, as I have built up a small collection of N-scale locomotives and rolling stock in anticipation of our move back to Closter and with it the opportunity to build a small layout in the garage there. But I've not forsaken astronomy, and along with the trains I've acquired a few little things from Orion for my Antares refractor.

• 2" Dielectric Mirror Diagonal - The Tele Vue Everbrite diagonal from my TV85 has been working fine, but I would rather not have to move it back and forth between scopes. This new diagonal was recently introduced, it appears to be the same Chinese OEM sold by other brands (Astronomy Technologies).
  
  
• V-Block Minus Violet Filter - Haven't really found fringing to be much or an issue with the Antares; the long (f9.4) focal ratio seems to alleviate most of it. But last time out I did notice a bit of a purple halo around brighter stars. I've been meaning to get one of these filters for a while - I blew my chance when Astronomics was clearing out their William Optics filters (I waited a few hours too long) - so when I saw the Orion filters on sale I jumped at it. From reviews on CN and elsewhere, the Orion V-Block is stronger than other filters at removing fringe (caused by chromatic aberration of achromatic lenses), but at the expense of introducing a yellowish tint. I purchased the 2" version, which will stay more or less permanently attached to the diagonal.
  
  
• EZ Finder Deluxe - Lord knows I love my Telrad, but the dang thing is just so goofy looking! This new finder has 4 selectable reticles, and looks like it's about 1/3 the size of the Telrad. Since the mounting foot is different than the stock Antares finder mount I had to order the optional mounting block; this will require drilling two holes in the OTA.

Moon Ring Over Lake Wallkill

Saw one of these in early November, and again tonight. Moon rings are caused by moonlight being refracted by ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. Photo taken handheld, Canon Digital Rebel (300D), ISO 1600, 1/2-sec exposure, 18-55mm EFS lens (@ 18mm, barely wide enough to capture the entire ring!). Had to Photoshop the hell out of the image in order to bring out the ring, thus the grainy, overexposed look.

Antares Crayford & Sirius Mount Tests

It's been a good month since my defective Sirius mount was swapped out for a replacement, and it wasn't until tonight that I finally got a chance to use it. I'm not too pleased, frankly. There are paint chips all over it and a good sized gash on one of the panels; it looks as though it is a repacked factory second unit. And the polar alignment scope is so over-illuminated that it is impossible to see through it - all I see is a washed out red light. Plus, there is a high-pitched oscillating whistle emanating from the mount head which was not present in the original mount.

Not sure what can be done at this point, it's been a month since the swap (and two since the original purchase). I removed the polar scope and can see that the red LED is dead center in the optical path; maybe it needs to be repositioned. This is what I get for trying to save money, I suppose - I should have saved a little longer and bought the Vixen Sphinx. As my brother always says, "You buy shit, you get shit."

On a happier note, the new Crayford works very well. It has just enough back travel to focus all of my Vixen LVW eyepieces. I didn't try the Powermate or either camera (EOS & Neximage), but I primarily intend to use the 127mm as a visual instrument anyway. Worst case, I will need to buy an extender. I already need to buy one for my TV85, so it is moot.

Did the go-to alignment song and dance again with the Sirius. Tried 1-Star and 3-Star, neither worked very well. I need to get that Telrad mounted, and soon, because the straight finder scope is danger of going in the lake. Another week or two and I'll be able to see Polaris, so that should help with alignment. Until then, my hair is thinning rapidly. I wasn't planning on doing any real observing since it is a work night, but did get a few nice peeks at M31, M29 and M57 before packing it in.

Antares 127mm Crayford Upgrade

The biggest shortcoming of the stock Antares refractor is the rack and pinion focuser - very stiff, an unacceptable amount of play in the drawtube, and a visual back which uses metal set screws instead of a compression ring. To remedy this weak link, I ordered a new FRM2 dual-speed Crayford focuser from ScopeStuff for $149.00; mounting it to the Antares required the FRC7 5" adapter ring, an additional $44.00. The focuser is produced by GSO, though there are no markings on either piece.

For under $200, I believe I have transformed this scope dramatically from a visual-only instrument to something I might actually be able to use for imaging. I say "believe" because, along with the focuser, the mailman also delivered clouds and likely thunderstorms for the weekend, so field tests will have to wait. But my initial impressions are positive - very smooth feel, fairly nice construction. Surely not as nice as a Moonlite or FeatherTouch, but I just couldn't bring myself to spend $500-$600 on a focuser for a $300 OTA.

I'm a little concerned about back focus, the drawtube is not nearly as long as the stock R&P focuser. Whether this will allow enough range to work without an extension tube remains to be seen. I'm fairly certain that I will need some sort of extension for imaging with the DSLR, but it might be OK for visual use. We shall see...

Installation was not too difficult: I removed the three mounting screws and gently worked the stock focuser off the OTA. There was a strip of tape around the edge of the tube which had to be removed before the new 5" mounting ring would fit. The ring was supplied with three screws, washers, and nuts; I managed to secure them without dropping anything into the tube. Finally, the focuser mounted to the ring using the three screws from the original focuser - I would have preferred new screws because the original ones are the countersunk type.

In my haste to install the FRM2, I forgot to weigh it to compare with the stock focuser. I'm going to say it is slightly heavier, but I can't be sure. There are two tension screws on the underside between the knobs: One adjusts the tension of the drawtube - by loosening it completely, the drawtube can be completely disengaged and moved in and out by hand. The second screw locks the focuser and prevents the focus knobs from moving the drawtube. This works far better than the single tension screw system I've been accustomed to.

Other notes on GSO focusers:

• Hyper-tuning Your GSO Crayford
• JMI Motofocus for GSO Focusers
  

Observing: Clusters & Galaxies in And, Tri, Per & Cas

New moon Thursday night, cool and clear. It's TV85 time, because I don't feel like doing the big-scope setup and breakdown thing on a weeknight. It was dark already by 8:30pm, temp 51 deg, humidity 91% with dewpoint at 48 deg, so I thought it prudent to break out the dew zapper for the objective - I never got the heating element for eypieces but it seems to be OK as long as I keep the lens capped when I'm not looking through it. By midnight the temp dropped to 45 deg, humidity 97%, and dewpoint 44 deg - things started getting wet!


Despite the moon-free night the skies were still washed out from neighborhood lights and the Vernon light soup in the southeast. The lights next door finally went out around 10:30. I managed to get a peek at a few objects in the Andromeda-Triangulum-Perseus-Cassiopeia area of the sky:

• M33: So faint I had a hard time finding it.
• M31: Easy, with M110 visible above it.
• NGC-752: Open cluster, easily spotted though not very exciting.
• NGC-869/NGC-884 Double Cluster: Cleared the trees around 12:30am - simply stunning in the LVW42 and LVW22 Vixens!
• Stock 2: Just to the NW of the Double Cluster, very large.
• NGC-663: A little further MW, located about halfway between Epsilon and Delta Cassiopea (the two easternmost stars in the "W".
• M45 Pleiades: Another object that comes alive in the Vixen LVWs.

I bounced back and forth between these objects for a while. Just after 1am I packed it in for the night.

Starry Night Pro Plus 6

I received my Version 6 upgrade to Starry Night this week - spent the extra dough to move up from Pro to Pro Plus, which includes the AllSky images. Installation took up about 11gb of hard drive. First run showed that it did not save any of my preferecences such as rquipment, log entries, favorites, location. I managed to find some of the files in my user library prefs folder, but was only able to recover the equipment details. All of my favorites and log entries are gone. No big deal, I guess, but it would have been nice.

First impressions are somewhat favorable, but not mind-blowingly so. I like the AllSky CCD Mosaic, even though the resolution suffers at high magnifications. Speed seems a little sluggish compared to SNP5 on my 1GHz Powerbook G4. There are new star chart print features, which let you print a three-pane chart (one main chart, plus two finder charts); this could be useful. I like the Markers and Outlines feature which identify lunar and planetary features like craters, mare, and other surface details; however, even though multiple features can be selected, only one name shows at a time. I'm pretty sure this is not the way it's supposed to be. In any case, the high resolution lunar surface images are very good, and should make identification of craters in my lunar photographs easier in the future.

Eratosthenes & Montes Apenninus in Starry Night Pro Plus 6

A big problem was discovered while testing the remote control of the Sirius mount. I gave it an indoor test run on Friday night and found some serious problems, not the least of which is the software's inability to point the scope to whatever is at screen center - it either points somewhere else, or gives me a "Below Horizon" error message. Other little things like loss of connection between Mac and Sirius, disappearing cursor during scope control, andz inability to change default horizon graphics, were also noted. Reported all of this to SN Tech Support, they are handing it off to the scope interface guru. Hope to have an answer next week after the holiday. I don't remember having all of these problems with SNP5, but I never really used it much for remote control, either. Still, I'm fairly certain that, at the very least, SNP5 was able to slew to screen center...

Better graphics aside, I'm not sure the upgrade was worth the $120 it cost. A full list of all upgrade features can be found here.

Leo Fender, Astronomer

No, not really. But if Leo Fender ever did design a case just for binoculars, it would have looked just like this!

It's actually a case for harmonicas which had been kicking around the store for a while. I asked Joe what the deal was, he told me that it was locked and no key could open it, and that if I could open it I could have it. Five minutes and one bent paper clip later, it was mine. Wasn't sure what to use it for - eyepieces was my first thought, but I already have two cases for those. Then I realized it might be perfect for my Orion 10x50 binocs, and sure enough they fit like a glove. The tray on the right lifts out to give me additional storage for stuff like a red flashlight, pens, etc. The S&T Pocket Sky Atlas fits, too; might stitch a mesh pocket into the top lid to hold it snug.

The Unplanetization of Pluto

The vote is in, and I demand a recount:

Capping years of intense debate, astronomers resolved today to demote Pluto in a wholesale redefinition of planethood that is being billed as a victory of scientific reasoning over historic and cultural influences. But already the decision is being hotly debated.

Officially, Pluto is no longer a planet.

I fart in their general direction.

Here's my take on it: The IAU's resolution, voted on by a stark minority of professional astronomers, defines a planet as "a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around a star or stellar remnants; (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape; (c) is not massive enough to initiate thermonuclear fusion of deuterium in its core; and, (d) has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit." Pluto apparently meets the first three criteria, but not the fourth.

A faction of scientists have had a hard-on for Pluto since the day Clyde discovered it, and it seems they've finally gotten their cookie. While there are plenty of pro astronomers that do not agree with Pluto's demotion, it is largely the public and amateur astronomers who are most perturbed at this turn of events - not because the decision is necessarily wrong, but because it is unneccessary. The IAU could have expanded the definition to include Pluto, or made an exception to it on Pluto's behalf - a grandfather clause, if you will, or a Roger Maris-style asterisk. I honestly believe the reason they chose not to is as much a case of the "pros" thumbing their collective noses at the lowly masses as it is a matter of science. The new definition is completely arbitrary; it could easily, and just as arbitrarily, have been worded to remove Uranus from the list by simply adding , "(e) has an axial tilt of 45 degress or less." Apparently, the only reason the IAU would need to do that is "Just Because".

I freely admit that my reaction is mostly emotional. There may be plenty of valid scientific reasons for demoting Pluto. I simply don't care. Pluto has been a member of the planet club since 1930. This is, as stated in the above quote, a matter of culture and history, which (it may surprise the propeller-heads to learn) are just as important to mankind as science; it should have been left well enough alone. Instead, Pluto is now in a newly created class of Solar-orbiting objects called a dwarf planet. I'm confused already - if it's not a planet, why call it a dwarf planet? Either it's a planet, or it's not. The distinction reeks of Clintonesque word parsing ("It's not sex, it's oral sex!"). You'd figure that these geniuses would be clever enough to come up with a more distinctive name for their newly invented class. How about "Pla-not"?

David Levy makes a great point:

"The Earth has much more in common with Pluto than with, say, Jupiter," Levy said. "You can walk on Pluto, there are three moons in its sky. Land on Jupiter, you'd just fall right in. Jupiter and the Earth have almost nothing in common, yet they're both called planets without any debate."

What he said. In this spirit I hereby propose that we further divide the remaining eight so-called "celestial bodies" that orbit our Sun into two groups: "Planets" (which would include Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) and "Big Balls of Gas" (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune). When do I get to vote?

More on this:

• Pluto vote 'hijacked' in revolt (BBC)
  
• Goodbye, Pluto. Hello, "Dwarf Planets"! (S&T)
• Pluto Demoted: No Longer a Planet in Highly Controversial Definition (Space.com)
• IAU 2006 General Assembly: Result of the IAU Resolution votes
• Pluto (Wikipedia)
• Bush Kicks Pluto Out of Solar System (BlameBush!)
• The New York Times: Pluto Crisis Edition (The People's Cube)
• The Fight For Pluto Rages On (S&T)
• Astronomers Plot to Overturn Planet Definition (NewScientist)
  

Sirius Swap (or: Why I Support the Local Guys)

As mentioned previously, my Sirius mount exhibited a significant amount of play in the RA axis, enough to cause objects centered in my LVW13 eyepiece to shift 2/3 of the way to the edge whenever I touched the focuser. I reported this problem to Orion who agreed that this was not normal. They said, "Return it to us for repair, or bring it back to High Point Scientific for exchange." Hmm. Tough choice.

I forwarded Orion's email to Dave at HPS; less than an hour later, he emailed me back to say a new mount was on the way, and that he would call me when it arrived so we could do the swap. It came in about 2.5 weeks later. In the meantime, I was able to use the original mount for two consecutive weekends of decent weather - nights that I would have lost, or at least would have been relegated to the TV85 + Porta, if I had to return the mount to Orion. Instead, I got to enjoy some nice observing time with the Antares 5" while waiting for the replacement mount. This vindicates my decision to buy locally, even though I probably could have had it faster and cheaper (no sales tax) by ordering directly from Orion. The moral of the story, boys and girls, is: Whenever possible, support the home team!

As for the new mount, not a hint of the play that troubled the first mount. Also the movement in both RA and Dec feels a lot less constricted by the infamous "Synta glue" lubrication. Since the weather has reverted to the New Jersey standard (clear on worknights, clouds on weekends) I set the mount up in the living room for a shakedown with Astroplanner, and found everything to be working OK. The polar scope is again not aligned with the hole when the Dec axis is set to 90 deg. This time I'm just going to leave it alone.

While at High Point, I ordered another 11 lb. counterweight which will be drop-shipped from Orion. This should improve the balance of the 5" scope, and give me some headroom for adding things like cameras, large eyepieces, and piggybacked scopes, not to mention the C8 I plan to acquire soon.

Of Globulars and HST

I'm not the only one looking at globular clusters of late. Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have imaged the dimmest red and white dwarfs in NGC-6397, a globular cluster in the souther constellation of Ara. The press release:

17-Aug-2006: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered what astronomers are reporting as the dimmest stars ever seen in any globular star cluster.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered what astronomers are reporting as the dimmest stars ever seen in any globular star cluster. Globular clusters are spherical concentrations of hundreds-of-thousands of stars.

These clusters formed early in the 13.7-billion-year-old universe. The cluster NGC 6397 is one of the closest globular star clusters to Earth. Seeing the whole range of stars in this area will yield insights into the age, origin, and evolution of the cluster.

Although astronomers have conducted similar observations since Hubble was launched, a team led by Harvey Richer of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, is reporting that they have at last unequivocally reached the faintest stars. Richer's team announced their findings today at the 2006 International Astronomical Union General Assembly in Prague, Czech Republic, and in the August 18 edition of Science.

"We have run out of hydrogen-burning stars in this cluster. There are no fainter such stars waiting to be discovered. We have discovered the lowest-mass stars capable of supporting stable nuclear reactions in this cluster. Any less massive ones faded early in the cluster's history and by now are too faint to be observed," said Richer.

Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys completed a census of two distinct stellar populations in NGC 6397. Hubble surveyed the faintest red dwarf stars which fuse hydrogen in their cores like our sun, and the dimmest white dwarfs, which are the burned-out relics of normal stars.

The light from these faint stars is as dim as the light produced by a birthday candle on the Moon seen from Earth. NGC 6397 is 8,500 light-years away from Earth. Analyzing the burned-out remnants of stars that died long ago, Hubble showed that the dimmest white dwarfs have such low temperatures that they are undergoing a chemical change in their atmospheres that makes them appear bluer rather than redder as they cool. This phenomenon had been predicted, but never observed.

These white dwarfs are the relics of stars, up to eight times as massive as the sun, which have exhausted the fuel capable of supporting nuclear reactions in their cores. Stars that were initially even more massive died as supernovae very early in the cluster's life, leaving behind neutron stars, black holes, or no debris at all.

Astronomers have used white dwarfs in globular clusters as a measure of the universe's age. The universe must be at least as old as the oldest stars. White dwarfs cool down at a predictable rate - the older the dwarf, the cooler it is, making it a perfect "clock" that has been ticking for almost as long as the universe has existed. Richer and his team are using the same age-dating technique to calculate the cluster's age. NGC 6397 is currently estimated to be nearly 12 billion years old.

A globular cluster's dimmest stars have eluded astronomers because their light is too feeble. Richer's team used Hubble's Advanced Camera to probe deep within the cluster for nearly five days to capture the faint stars. The camera's resolution is so sharp that it is capable of isolating cluster stars in this crowded cluster field, enabling cluster members to be distinguished from foreground and background stars. The cluster stars move together as the cluster orbits the Milky Way Galaxy, and Hubble was able to pinpoint which stars were moving with the cluster. The Hubble team used this technique together with archival Hubble images taken as much as a decade earlier to make sure they had a pure sample of cluster stars.

Burnham Remembered

Some amateur astronomers are working to create a memorial to the great Robert Burnham, Jr., author of the famed Burnham's Celestial Handbook. His tragic story was told by Tony Ortega in an article for the Phoenix New Times in 1997. I wish them luck in their endeavour.

My father had purchased the original 3-volume Dover hardcover set many years ago; they remain a valuable part of my library. Burnham's Celestial Handbook was instrumental in fueling my interest in astronomy at an early age - I read those books years before I ever looked through a telescope - and I am not surprised that so many people share my admiration of these books and the author.

Astroplanner

I don't think I've ever registered a piece of shareware. That's because most shareware I've come across generally sucks, and even that which does not suck usually gets installed, run once or twice, then quickly forgotten. Not so Astroplanner; this program is amazing.

I first tried Astroplanner about two years ago (v.1.3.x) but didn't really use it. It was fairly sluggish on the Mac, as I recall, and just didn't grab me at the time. Yesterday, I decided to revisit the app, and after downloading the latest version (v.1.5.2) I was blown away at the amount of work the author, Paul Rodman, has been putting into this program (as the release notes will attest). So I sent my $25 registration fee and downloaded a bunch of the object catalogs - NGC and IC catalogs, Herschell 400, Burnham Double Stars, Caldwell objects - and have been playing around with it.

Perhaps the reason the earlier version didn't impress me is that I just didn't have a use for it at the time - I was fairly new to the NexStar 8 GPS and perfectly content finding and selecting targets from its built-in lists, plus I was only chasing Messier objects and a few NGC's from the Night Sky Observer's Guide and S&T articles. After a couple of years of looking at the same, limited number of objects, I've graduated to more challenging targets and spending a lot more time planning my sessions around specific types of objects. For example, I might spend an entire night observing only open clusters, or globulars, or planetary nebulae, or whatever. Astroplanner makes it easy to generate a list based on numerous criteria (i.e., all Planetary Nebulae from the NGC Catalog located in Lyra, Cygnus, Vulpecula, Saggita, Delphinus and Aquilia, 10th magnitude or brighter, with declination greater than +10 deg). Click, click, done - I have a nice list of targets for the night, and with the telescope connected, another click puts the target in my eyepiece (well, some of the time...).

A nice feature is the ability to download images from the Digital Sky Survey (DSS), cache them to disk, and display them along with the other data. This can be very helpful if you're not sure if what you're looking at is actually the desired object - just check the image and compare!

Once your target list is complete, Astroplanner can print various forms, including a nifty Observation Form which places various data at top, DSS images below that, and an observation log section with sketching circles and blank fields for notes and details.

Control of the Sirius mount is very straightforward; perform the initial alignment process as usual, then just plug in the cable, set the mount to RS232C control, and it's done. Nothing fancy, just a convenient way to point your scope at an object with one click of the mouse, rather than having to scroll through menus and nested tables with the hand controller, looking for an object that might not even be in the list.

I'll add more notes once I get the chance to use Astroplanner in the field (or on the deck, as the case may be).

Observing: Chi Cygni

Sky & Telescope reports:

The red, Mira-type variable star Chi Cygni is having a very unusual maximum right now. It's one of the brightest such variables to begin with (typically peaking at about magnitude 5.2), but now it's about magnitude 3.8, according to many reports to the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) in the last two weeks. Writes John Bortle: "This would make the current maximum the brightest in 148 years.

I haven't pointed a scope at this one yet but I've been observing it naked eye for the past week or so.

Observing: Planetaries & Globulars in Cyg, Del & Aql, and the Moon

Alignment worked well tonight, pointed toward Vega and Altair in the correct direction. Didn't do anything differently this time. Go figure. Tested on M57 (center of field), M27 (toward edge), and M29 (out of field in TV Zoom @ 24mm). Best I can hope for without accurate polar alignment, I guess.

For tonight's target list, I picked a bunch of planetary nebulae and globular clusters in Cygnus, Delphinus and Aquila with help from the S&T PSA and NSOG:

• NGC 6826: The Blinking Planetary, very bright. Damned thing actually blinks!
• NGC 6905: Revisited this planetary after seeing it last time out. It's still there...
• M56: GC, good view with LVW13
• M71: GC, also good with LVW13
• NGC 6760: GC, dim but visible
• NGC 6934: GC, brighter but small
• NGC 7006: GC, also dim

Several other objects on my list were not seen (NGCs 6842, 6894, 7008 and 7048); NGC 6891 was already in the tree by the time I attempted it.

By 10:30PM, moon glow washed out the sky. I set the Sirius for lunar tracking and waited for the big guy to rise from the trees in the east to try some DSLR imaging with the Digital Rebel and Celestron 40mm Plossl. After 11:30 I took a bunch of shots of the eastern limb around Mare Crisium; three came out OK (click any image to see larger version with craters labeled):



One big problem: All images grow out of focus radially from the center of the field, as if they were put through a Radial Blur filter in Photoshop. This is most evident in shots in which I placed the limb near the center of the field, thus offsetting the moon to one side:

I'm hoping that something in the imaging chain was not seated properly, perhaps the eyepiece in the Maxview DSLR adapter. Or maybe the combined weight of diagonal, Maxview, eyepiece and camera body was too much for the drawtube (which I probably did not have fully locked down) and caused it to shift out of line slightly. Whatever, I need to figure this out next time.

Antares 127mm Third Light

A clear, cloudless night, 66 deg at 10pm, relative humidity 48% early on but rising to above 80% by the time I packed it in, with the full moon rising just as it gets dark. In Glass-Half-Full mode, I embrace this opportunity to see how well the 5" achro performs on the brightest object in the night sky.

Short answer: Not too bad! Maybe my color blindness has finally found a practical use, as I saw very little purple fringing on the lunar limb. The scope delivered very sharp views with the TV 32mm and 20mm Plossls; the 20mm at 61x and 50 deg AFOV fit the entire lunar disc perfectly. I tried the LVWs but thought they were a little soft in contrast. I noticed that my lunar filter didn't want to screw into the barrel of the LVW13; need to check to make sure the threads are OK.

I performed a two-star alignment on Arcturus and Altair, but it still couldn't place anything in the FOV, even with the LVW42 - it's gotta be off in altitude, because it should be close enough to north in azimuth to give it an adequate rough polar alignment. Damn trees!

Still trying to figure out the logic by which the Sirius chooses alignment stars - when I chose Altair first, Arcturus didn't even come up as an option for second alignment star; but when I chose Arcturus first, Altair did. How odd...

I didn't stay out long since it's a work night, and the full moon gets old fast. Saw a few moonbats (real ones, not the left-wing Bush-hating variety). After trying different eyepieces for an hour or so I packed it in.

SIde note: I exchanged a couple of emails with Orion tech support about the excessive play in the mount's RA axis; they seem to think it is a defective and suggested I either send it in for repair or exchange through the dealer, so I emailed Dave at High Point who agreed to swap it out with another mount head. Orion is sending one out, it should be here in about a week. Great service from both Orion and High Point!

Antares 127mm Second Light

Just a quick session to check a few things that were nagging me since last night's session...

All of the initial settings are OK, the Sirius definitely points west when Vega is east of meridian. Does UTC offset need to be -4 hours, even when daylight savings time is selected? Is one hour difference enough to explain that large an error?

Did 2-star alignment on Vega and Altair, and was able to find M13 and M92 this time with the LVW42. After centering and switching eyepieces, they both looked nice with their outer stars resolving and their cores bright. I want to compare the views between the Antares and TV85 at similar magnification next time out just to see what the extra 1.5" or so buys.

After the Hercules globs, I entered M27 and the Sirius but in dam near in the center of the field. But after a while (20 min maybe?) it drifted out of the field. Selected it again, and it went right back to the middle of the field! OK... so if the mount knows where the object is, why can't it keep it centered while tracking?

Polar scope definitely does not illuminate, and straight-thru finder scope is most definitely the must useless piece of shit I've ever had the privilege of owning.

Clouds rolled in quickly a little before 10pm.

Antares 127mm First Light

Dang, she's pretty! With the tripod legs fully extended and the scope pointing north she stands a few inches taller than me, so I'm guessing 6'4" or so. For tonight I've got a short list of targets in and around the Summer Triangle - some old favorites, some I've never looked at before - compiled from Sue French's column in the September S&T plus a few I picked out of the S&T Pocket Atlas: Messiers 13, 15, 27, 29, 39, 56, 57, 71, 92, and NGCs 6793, 6800, 6802, 6819, 6882/85, 6883, 6905 and 7006.

Nice weather, finally - temp was 77 deg when I set up around 9pm, but dropped to 69 deg by 11 pm. Forgot to check relative humidity, but it was less sticky at 11 than at 9. Unfortunately it is Regatta Weekend at Lake Dipshit, so the air was thick with gunpowder smoke from the fireworks, and the mandatory "Turn Your Fucking Lights On" law is in effect. Waxing gibbous Moon turned the sky into a pale gray, not the best conditions for seeking DSO's.

Not being able to see Polaris is a major setback, and rough alignment is touchy. I tried 3-star alignment first (Vega, Altair and Arcturus) but the go-to was off most of the time. Realigned using 2-star method (Vega and Altair) and it was an improvement, at least around those two stars in the triangle; go-to placed M13 and M92 in Hercules so out of field I gave up trying to find them.

After the first alignment, my official first light target was Albireo; with low power (LVW42 at 29x) showed the colors of the yellow and blue pair beautifully! Then I went through my target list. Mostly used the LVW13 (94x) as conditions did not favor the LVW8 (152.5x). Of the globulars, M15 was the only one that even remotely showed any resolution into stars; M56, M71 and NGC 7006 were just fuzz, looking more like galactic cores than globs. Open clusters looked very nice, especially M29, M39 and the pair of NGC 6882 & NGC 6885. I punched in planetary nebula NGC 6905 for the hell of it and was suprised that it was visible under these bright sky conditions - pretty faint, but I clearly could see it as a faint disc using averted vision; it tended to disappear when looking directly at it.

So this session was not great as far as observing goes, but it was a good first-light shakedown of both mount and scope to give me an idea what they can do under fairly miserable observing conditions. Good things I noticed:

• Optics seem very good; quick star test showed well centered concentric circles inside focus, though poor seeing turned the disc to mush outside of focus. Definitely not an apo, the center turned bright violet-blue on brighter stars.
  
• Mount is fairly simple to set up and disassemble.
  
• Slewing and tracking are both quiet.
• The edge of field astigmatism I noticed when using the wider LVWs (42, 22 and 17 mm) with the TV85 seem to be completely alleviated with the longer focal length Antares.

Not-so-good things I noticed:

• Polar alignment scope does not illuminate
• Keypad buttons are virtually unreadable in twilight
• Play in mount is as bad as the mirror shift in my N8GPS!
• Focuser is stiffer than morning wood.
• Finder scope is utterly useless. Need 45 deg finder with illuminated reticle.
  
• Can't update alignment like I could with Nexstar.
• When choosing Vega as alignment star, scope slewed in opposite direction (west of meridian as opposed to east). Same thing with Altair. WTF??? Clock, date, UTC offset, lat/lon all correct. Could I possibly be that far off from Polaris? Need to check into this.

Antares 127mm Arrives

Woohoo! A quick visual check, everything seems OK. Brad (the seller) did a great job packing it up for the trip from Washington. I mounted it on the Sirius to get an idea how easy setup is going to be in six or eight months when the weather becomes conducive to astronomical observation.

She's a big 'un for sure, not sure the total weight with diagonal, eyepiece, rings, dovetail, and finder scope mounted - probably up over 22 lbs, so it should be well under the published 30 lb. limit of the mount. Initial impressions:

• It barely balances in RA with the one counterweight all the way at the end of the shaft. The 2" TV diagonal is very tight in the visual back but I think it's OK.
  
  
• The rack & pinion focuser has a lot of really goopy grease on it, might want to look into cleaning it up a bit, but it appers to be smooth.
  
  
• There is a small amount of play in the declination axis - not sure if that is normal, or if it will affect use.
  
  
• I'm going to have to extend the tripod legs quite a bit if I want to observe near zenith without kneeling on the ground; maybe a pier extension will be better, I really like to keep the legs as short as possible.

Linda is going to freak when she sees this thing in the living room...

Sirius Update

I posted a question on Cloudy Nights about the polar scope alignment problem and got a fast response telling me how to correct it - thanks Charlie! Now it's good to go as soon as the weather cooperates.

While at Mom's yesterday I picked up the battery power pack so I could give the Sirius a milk run this (Sunday) afternoon. Everything seems to be working, I did the initial settings thing (date, time, lat, lon, UTC offset, daylight savings...), and accepted the first three alignment stars it picked. Then I slewed to a few objects as if it were middle of the winter just to get an idea how the thing works and moves around. Quite nicely and quietly, as it turns out. The hand controller is fairly similar to the Nexstar HC, same basic key layout and feel.

As I type this I'm just letting it track for a while to see how long it will take to run the power pack down; it charged a little more than half way on the LED scale, despite being charged overnight. If it can't run the scope for more than a couple of hours I will have to find another way of powering the mount.

More good news: UPS online tracking shows my Antares scheduled for delivery on Tuesday (Aug 1). Woohoo!!!

Orion Sirius EQ-G Arrives

Picked up my Sirius mount today from High Point Scientific and set it up in the kitchen to get a feel for how it works. Despite being my first-ever German equatorial mount, the assembly was very intuitive and it all went together fairly smoothly.

One small issue so far - the polar alignment scope looks through a hole in the dec shaft, and the two are supposed to line up when the dec is set to 90 deg, according to the manual. I have to turn the dec axis 35 deg counter-clockwise before I can see through the hole. I've emailed HPS about this, waiting to hear what they have to say. I really hope I don't have to send this thing back.

I tossed the TV85 on and balanced it easily. Haven't powered it up yet since I need to dig up a 12VDC 2A supply from the shack. She's a pretty thing, tho' the TV85 looks a bit wee on it. I won't be trying the mount out for real anytime soon - rain is forecast all weekend, naturally.

Now I'm just waiting for the Antares 5" to show up; got an email from the seller, it was sent on Tuesday; been tracking it online but UPS hasn't given me much info other than that it departed Redmond, WA on July 26...

Clear at last!

Despite forecasts of clouds the skies are clear, so we'll give it a shot with the TV85. Temp at 9PM is 66 deg, humidity 81%, but it doesn't feel so bad outside. Skeeters were buzzing a bit but I sprayed myself down and put on some sleeves. Lights from next door and across the street, but hopefully these people will go to bed soon. This is my last shot at observing while Linda is in Texas; she's coming back tomorrow.

Setup: The Starbeam pointer is killing me - I struggle to get it aligned, and the flip mirror is useless. I'm ready to shit-can the thing once and for all if I can only figure out a way to mount the Telrad on the TV85 without having to resort to duct tape.

Did a quick star test with the 8mm LVW; nice circles inside and outside of focus. When I do it with the Powermate in-line the inside circles turn violet. Hmm... Also see a spot which I think is that ding in the diagonal - the idiot I bought it from must have dropped a 1.25" ep in without the adapter in place. I guess a new 99% 2" diagonal is in my future.

Back inside at 9:30pm waiting for things to darken a bit.

10PM: Lights out. Not the darkest skies but the Milky Way was visible overhead in Cygnus. With the S&T Pocket Atlas at hand I hopped to some old favorites: M57 (Ring), M56 (glob), M27 (Dumbell). The LVW13 was the champ again; the LVW8 didn't deliver any more detail, and the dimmer stars in the 8mm made the views less pleasing.

Put the UHC filter on the 42mm LVW and gazed around Cygnus. Open cluster M29 stood out from the crowd, looking like a miniature Hercules keystone asterism. Turned the scope around to Hercules and it's two globulars, M92 and M13. Then packed it in around 11:30. Temp dropped down to 61 deg at 11pm, while humidity rose to 93%. Still, it looks like I lucked out with cloud cover and transparency:

Notes: I confirmed the distortion issues with the LVW42 - focused stars grow comet tails near the edge; out of focus stars turn into little curved lines. This suggests asttigmatism, as noted by Pensack: "At night, it causes the stars at the edge of the field to appear as short radial lines on one side of focus, and short circumferential lines on the other. In focus, the star images may appear slightly blurry or appear like seagulls or bats." Yeah... what he said!

Still, I really like this eyepiece. I'm eager to try it on the Antares, to see if it improves in a scope with a longer focal length. The NebuStar UHC filter did a nice job of darkening the background, though I didn't notice any nebulosity around Sadr. Without the filter, the views around the star clouds of Cygnus looked fairly washed out in the LVW42; with the filter, the stars just seemed to pop out of a near-black background. A UHC filter is certainly not designed to be used on star clusters (unless there is surrounding nebulosity, for example the Pleaides); they will attenuate the light. However in this case, with a low magnification, wide-field eyepiece, I found the trade-off to be positive as the views were much nicer than without the filter.

So while I saw nothing new tonight, I was happy enough just to get back out under the stars. Let's face it, as long as I live where I can only observe at the zenith in the summer, I'm always going to be looking at M57, M27, M13, etc. when using the TV85 - it just ain't cut out for going any deeper. I used to be able to pull out the Night Sky Observer's Guide and view some of the more dificult NGC objects when I had the C8, but 85mm is simply not enough aperture for DSO's under my conditions. Maybe the 5" achro will work better. If not, I think the next scope will have to be a 10" or 12" dob.