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.

More of the same...

Oh, for Christ's sake...

It's got to end sometime, right?

See ya, C8...

The New Scope: Antares 127mm f/9.6 Achromatic

So the Nexstar is history, an Orion Sirius EQ-G mount is on order at High Point Scientific, and an Antares 127mm (5") f/9.6 achromatic refractor will be on it's way next week.

Just when I was set to keep the C8, I got an email response to my Astromart ad which I forgot to delete. Much haggling ensued, and I finally accepted $1,200 for it with the JMI focuser, Astrozap dew shield, and Losmandy counterweight. I kept the Thousand Oaks solar filter ('cause I will own another C8 someday...) and Celestron 40mm Plossl eyepiece.

I was minutes away from heading over to High Point to buy a C6R-GT when one of the voices in my head told me to check Astromart, where I found the Antares 127mm OTA for $300. I've only heard great things about these scopes, and while I would have prefered the 152mm (8") model I couldn't resist this scope at this price. Contacted the owner, sealed the deal, and then headed to HPS to buy a mount.

The CG-5A, upon first sight, was immediately ruled out. It would be perfect for the TV85, but I wouldn't put any SCT larger than the C6 on it. So I opted for the Sirius EQ-G after talking it over with Grant at HPS. They didn't have it in stock, but I pre-paid for it (to beat the sales tax hike deadline, as NJ seems intent on becoming the first government in history to tax itself into prosperity). Should be able to pick it up late next week.

While at HPS I had a long look at the Orion long-tube 120mm, which sells new for $300. Nice looking scope but I decided the Antares is the way to go. Also tested some of the Burgess/TMB planetary eyepieces on a little AT66ED (which is one cool little scope!). I was pleased to see that they have a large eye lens, I wasn't sure because you can't tell from any of the photos I've seen. I tried the 4, 5 & 7 mm pieces and liked 'em a lot. There's a special now - buy two, get one free - which is not too bad of a deal. Might even be worth getting 3 pairs for $400.00 and a binoviewer for $139.00. What to sell, what to sell???

So now we wait...

On Eyepieces

The weather at Lake Wallkill continues to be uncooperative, leaving me much time to ponder things such as the astronomer's obsession with glass. Let me preface all of the below with a disclaimer: my knowledge of optics is limited, I only know what I've learned from reading stuff on the internet, in magazines such as Sky & Telescope and Astronomy, and books like Telescope Optics : Complete Manual for Amateur Astronomers by Rutten and Van Venrooij. These are just my observations and opinions, which I offer for free with the guarantee that they are worth every cent. If anyone disagrees with any or all of what I have to say, please feel free to write me off as a crank and ignore me; trust me, I won't mind.

Eyepiece Forums
On the Cloudy Nights forum on eyepieces, and elsewhere, one can sit back and watch people pontificate for days in threads such as "Televue 15mm Plossl or Edmund's RKE?", "Pentax 40mm XW versus Tele Vue 35mm Panoptic", " W.O. UWAN 16 vs. Nagler 17 T4 comparo?". This is not really unusual or in any way particular to the eyepiece groups; topics in other groups wander down similar roads ("SCT vs. Mak: Which is better?", "Which Diagonal for AT66ED?", or "G-11 versus CGE" ). Nor is it limited to astronomy - I still bear scars from the "NRD-535D vs. Drake R8" battles long ago on the old GEnie shortwave receiver forums.

I strive to avoid these conversations, in part because I usually have little to offer, but mainly because they are for the most part pointless. It may be social interaction at it's finest, or worst, but I also believe it is simply a manifestation of boredom. On the rare occasions that I allow myself to get sucked in, I always regret it.

That's not to say that I don't enjoy these threads. If you pay attention long enought you soon realize who among the myriad posters actually knows what they are talking about, and once you filter out the nonsense you can learn quite a bit. It's just that I grow weary at times.

I have but a modest collection of glass in my eyepiece case. Some are fairly expensive, some are cheapos. And I'm happy with all of them. Eyepiece snobs might argue that I'm happy because I don't know better, and they may be correct. I''ve no doubt that a Nagler will deliver a finer view than a Chinese mass-market Plossl of similar focal length. My point is, when people start splitting hairs about the pros and cons of different high-quality, high-priced eyepieces, any of which are as good as any other, that's when I tune out. It's no different than arguing about microscopic differences in third-order intercept points of high-end HF receivers, and whether anyone will notice a difference in normal use. It's an argument no one can win.

Trust me, I do not begrudge people their right to buy and compare as many different mega-bucks eyepieces as they like. God bless 'em. I just think it's an unfortunate and largely unnecessary distraction from what is ostensibly the reason we all got into these telescope thingies to begin with - to observe the heavens.

My Glass
First, there is my Tele Vue 32 mm Plossl. This was my first "good" eyepiece, purchased back in the early '90s when I first started using my dad's Super C8+. at the time I only had the stock 26 mm and 7 mm Plossls that came with the scope. The 26 m was OK, the 7 mm was virtually unusable for me because of the tiny eye lens. So I bought the TV 32 mm along with a TV 1.8x Barlow, which gave me magnifications of 62.5x and 112.5x. These two pieces have served me well; I still have and use the TV32P, though I've since moved to a 2.5x Powermate to take the place of the 1.8x Barlow. (No reason; just because. I swear, I did not wring my hands and pontificate over the decision to go from 1.8x to 2.5x on any online forums, I just bought the Powermate on a whim. I've never even compared the two in A/B tests.)


My TV85, which I purchased used on eBay, came with a TV 20 mm Plossl and a TV 8-24 mm click-zoom. I don't know if I would have bought them otherwise, but since I got them, I use them. The zoom works well with the C8 to give me a wide range with only two eyepieces, the zoom and the 32 mm.

The rest of my eyepieces are some Celestron Plossls (4, 6, 9, 15 and 32 mm, all Chinese cheapies) that were part of a $99 accessory kit purchased at the same time as my Nexstar 8 GPS; and the Nexstar 40 mm Plossl that came with the scope. The 4 mm and 6 mm are the only ones I use, they are the shortest in my collection and will make do until I replace them with something better.

In 2004 I indulged myself with a set of Vixen LVW Lanthanum wide-angle eyepieces (42, 22, 17, 13 & 8 mm focal lengths). Like the Powermate, I bought these without hand-wringing and head-scratching. I don't know why I chose them over Tele Vue (well, it may have had something to do with the price, because I'm a cheap bastard). They just seemed like a good fit for my particular likes: wide field of view, long eye relief, and large eye lens. I knew Vixen had a good rep, I liked the specs, so out came the plastic.


Since the LVWs arrived I have not spent much time, as many seem to do, looking at them to find out whether they have angular magnification distortion, field curvature, off-axis astigmatism, or whatever other aberrations. No, I prefer to spend what little time I can muster at the telescope looking through the eyepieces at cool stuff like star clusters, galaxies, and nebulae - much more interesting than looking for flaws in the glass.

The LVWs perform extremely well, and apart from some funkiness that I believe is astigmatism at the edges of the wider pieces (which I only notice when I look for it), I wouldn't trade them for anything. My three most often used LVWs are the 17, 13, and 8 mm. These yield the following magnifications in my two scopes:

Nexstar 8 GPS (2000 mm f.l.)
17 mm: 117.65x
13 mm: 153.85x
8 mm: 250x

TV85 (600 mm f.l.)
17 mm: 35.29x
13 mm: 46.15x
8 mm: 75x

Adding a Tele Vue 2.5x Powermate increases magnification to:

Nexstar 8 GPS (5000 mm effective f.l.)
17 mm: 294.12x
13 mm: 384.62x
8 mm: 625x

TV85 (1500 mm effective f.l.)
17 mm: 88.24x
13 mm: 115.38x
8 mm: 187.5x

Admittedly, I have not used the LVWs much with the C8. For one thing, I haven't used the C8 very often since I got the LVWs; my TV85 is the workhorse in my stable. Also, I only have the stock 1.25" diagonal on the Celestron which (a) doesn't work very well with the LVWs, the tension screw rubs against the upper body of the eyepieces; and (b) it doesn't use a compression ring to secure the eyepiece, it has two screws which will mar the chrome barrel, and also appears to skew the eyepiece rather than hold it straight; this can't be good for viewing quality. I've tried using the Tele Vue Everbrite 2" diagonal with the C8 but since I have the Crayford focuser, the whole rear assembly extends so far off the back of the scope it prevents me from looking up near the zenith - and that's about the only place I can look because of the trees at my home. So until I get a new 2" SCT diagonal, it's pretty much Plossl-only for the C8.

I don't use the LVW 42 mm or 22 mm very often with the TV85, but I do love them for cruising the Milky Way in Cygnus on clear, dark nights during the summer. I think I've had about three of them since buying the TV85 in 2004. Otherwise, they are a bit too low power for the stuff I like to look at.

The Tele Vue 2.5x Powermate may be the most valuable accessory in my eyepiece case. It provides a nice range of magnification with a limited number of eyepieces. I especially like the fact that it maintains the eye relief of the longer focal length eyepieces as well as the larger eye lenses - I have a hard time looking through those little pin holes in shorter Plossls. In the course of observing a particular object, I can start with the 32 mm Plossl for a wide view, move down to the LVW 22 mm, then work through the 17/13/8 mm set, before repeating with those three plus the Powermate.

What I Need
Just because I'm happy with what I've got doesn't mean I'm through purchasing glass. There's a big gap between my 42 mm and 22 mm LVWs presently filled by only only the Tele Vue 32 mm Plossl. To fill in this range, I am considering a number of eyepieces:

Orion Stratus: 35 mm ($199.95) & 30 mm ($179.95). These are LVW clones from what I gather, maybe the most obvious choice to complete my LVW wide-angle set.

Vixen LV: 30 mm ($199.95) 2" barrel, 60 deg FOV. But this may be a little too close to my TV32P.

Tele Vue Panoptic: 27 mm ($345.00) and 35 mm ($380.00). Both 2", with long eye relief (the 35 mm has an amazing 28 mm e.r.) But you pay for it.

William Optics UWAN: 28 mm ($398.00). Expensive, but people are raving about these UWANs. 2" barrel, 82 deg FOV!

To replace the Celestron 4 and 6 mm cheapo Plossls at the short end, I am really hot for the Burgess/TMB Planetary Series - only $99 each, available in 2.5, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9 mm focal lengths; they are getting high praise for their contrast on planets. On the other hand, the Tele Vue Nagler 3-6 mm Zoom might be the better option, at least for the shorter end of the range; that, plus a B/TMB 9 mm might cover it perfectly for planetary observing. I'm just worried about the small eye lenses these eyepieces appear to have. I like picture windows, not peepholes!

Resources:

• An Eyepiece Primer by Al Nagler
  
• Evolution of the Astronomical Eyepiece by C.J.R. Lord
  
• Eyepiece Qualities and Aberrations by Don Pensack
  
• Nagler Mythos by Tom Trusock
  
• Tele Vue: A Historical Perspective - Company 7
  

Happy Fourth!

Is it July already? Damn. Two months of shit weather, so I've been hitting the books.

Chasing Hubble's Shadows by Jeff Kanipe: Just finished this one last night, a good update on where we presently stand in our quest to look back in time to the beginning of it all. Good overview of accelerated universal expansion, dark matter and dark energy, cosmic microwave background observations, reionization, and several other matters which are not covered in books even a few years older. Not a heavy read, but it requires one to pay attention. Since my attention is perpetually challenged, I will probably re-read it sometime in the near future.

Archives of the Universe by Marcia Bartusiak: Compiles in a single volume the actual scientific writings of all of the greats. It's not just another book about my heroes; it is a collection of their actual published works, mostly excerpted. As the author says at the opening of her Preface, "Often missing from astronomy textbooks are the voices of the scientists themselves... This book was compiled and written to reacquaint us with these words of discovery. Within these pages are excerpts from the seminal reports that first introduced both scientists and the public to a wondrous variety of celestial phenomena and in the process moved our understanding of the cosmos forward." Starting with the Venus Tables with which the Mayans first recorded their observations of the second planet (ca. 200AD) and ending with discovery at the end of the 20th Century that the universe's rate of expansion is accelerating, I am hard pressed to find any major advance in astronomy and physics that has been left out. Each chapter begins with Bartusiak's own notes on the topic covered, followed by the original work of the principal discoverer; her narrative style, which I'm familiar with from other books she's written, is excellent; this book can be read cover-to-cover, although I will most likely use it more as a reference.

Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku: Another book on superstring theory, branes, extra dimensions, time travel, and all sorts of cool shit that sounds perfectly good in theory but cannot be tested, therefore must be filed under "philosophy" rather than "science", at least until we develop the instruments capable of doing the experiments that produce real, falsifiable data. Interesting read nonetheless.

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On another note, shuttle mission STS-121 is scheduled for launch this afternoon after two previous launch attempts were scrubbed on Saturday and Sunday. The Shuttle is suuposed to dock with the ISS, which coincidently is scheduled to pass nearly straight overhead tonight, moving from NW to SE, passing the handle of the Ursa Major and rising to about 10° of zenith at around 9:38pm. It will be cloudy, I am sure; why should my luck change now? Anyway, I am pleased to note that HDNet has been covering the launch countdowns in high definition and 5.1 surround.