Jupiter, Saturn, The Moon & Wayne's Rail

Linda's in Baltimore for the weekend watching the Yankees lose, I am alone with the scopes and the bibbies. The piggyback rail that Wayne Gondella built for me is at the post office, I will pick it up on the way to NEAF tomorrow. The N8GPS has been screaming for attention, so out we go for a quickie...

Friday night (UTC Saturday): The First Quarter Moon is cradled nicely by the grouping of Castor, Pollux and Saturn. Viewed just after dusk after GPS Align, seeing was not great but a hint of color and Cassini division visible @150x (13mm Vixen LVW).:

The Moon with Castor, Pollux and Saturn
(counterclockwise from top right)
16 April 2005, 0200 UTC
Naked eye view (West at right)

On to Jupiter, now well above the mountains in the early evenings. I watched Europa disappear behind Jupiter. Best views with 13mm (150x), very nice views of equatorial bands; 8mm (250x) a little too ambitious.

Saturday morning: My first time at the North East Astronomy Forum held annually at Rockland Community College. It was much smaller than I expected (I'm used to the Dayton HamVention) but there was a lot to look at. The new Meade RCX-400 was cool, the Celestron CPC was kept away from the crowds at the back of their booth. Tons of big refractors and dobs. Nice ATM displays by the Springfield people. The Williams Optics SCT focuser and 2" diagonal were awesome. About 30 or 40 scopes set up outside with solar filters (many of which were Coronado H-Alpha). I got away easy and spent only $150 on a book (King's "The History Of The Telescope"), a Lens Pen, and a Class A screw-on solar filter for the TV-85. And I joined the Rockland Astronomy Club. I didn't stay long, not knowing anyone nor having much cash to spend on eyepieces or focusers.

Saturday afternoon: Back home, time to check out Wayne's rail. Beautifully machined, everything assembled easily. Set up the scopes outside and did my best to align the TV with the C8 using the afternoon moon; it aligned laterally (left-right) just fine, but the Moon was high in the FOV and couldn't be centered even with the front adjustment screws cranked all the way. Nevertheless, it's not so far out of whack that it is unusable, especially for wide field use which was my original intent.


Saturday night (UTC Sunday): Revisited Jupiter and Saturn, now comparing the TV-85 to the C8. Of course with the initial state of the rail alignment, there was a lot of slewing when going between the two. Using as close parity in magnification as I could - TV -85 @ 75x (8mm) and C8 @ 90x (22mm) - the views were similar, but the dark equatorial bands were crisper in the refractor (no surprise). Bumping the TV up to 185x with the TV Powermate 2.5 made the disc bigger but not much more detail was apparent due to poor seeing, while the 13mm on the C8 (150x) delivered comparable views. Tried using Light Blue and Orange filters in various combinations which gave a little more definition to the equatorial bands.