Cygnus, Lyra, and Andromeda with the TV-85 (2nd Session)

Setup and ready to go a little before 0300 (11 pm local). A little more humid, things not quite as crisp as last night, more neighborhood lights than last night until around midnight local, but Milky Way still bright, M31 still visible naked-eye.

Started out with some double stars, 61 Lyr split with ease, but Epsilon Lyr (Double-Double) not as easy - it took the 1.8x TV Barlow and TV Zoom set at 8mm (135x) in order to just make out the individual pairs. But there they were, positioned as per Burnham's. Biggest challenge was keeping things centered in the FOV at high magnifications.

Looked around Deneb for nebulae again. Despite nice "spacewalk" views with the Celestron 40mm NexStar TV 32mm Plössls, no real glimpse of nebulosity anywhere. I may add a UHC filter to my wish list, see if that helps. Next time out I want to compare these two eyepieces more closely to which one delivers the better wide-field views.

Open cluster M29 was fabulous at all magnifications. Super-crisp at lower magnifications (32mm = 18.75x, 24mm = 25x) right down (up?) to 12mm (50x) with the zoom. 8mm seemed to cause a loss of detail, as predicted my O'Meara in the Messier book. Ring Nebula (M27) not as sharp as last night.

The Starbeam finder definitely needs some dew prevention! And probably eyepiece as well. More $$$.... sigh.