Quote:
Originally Posted by Paddy
Great to hear how your mirror is performing, Sab. What a difference! Some nice obs of those lovely Pavo galaxies too.
|
Thanks Paddy, the old mirror doesn't even compare. Saturn was awesome during those steady moments at the beginning of the night. Rock hard ring shadow "under" the rings, the black hairline of Cassini division across the front, and the crepe ring was so clear and sharp infront of the planet that I thought it was the shadow of the ring! But it couldn't be the shadow as that was cast on the planet on the opposite side of the ring. 5 moons, including 12th mag Enceladeus just a few arc seconds from the planet. Limiting stellar mag is 15.6 so far in poor seeing from my outer suburban backyard. Did NOT expect to go that deep.
Stellar images, even in the poor seeing, resembled that of my 8"....with an airy disk visible even if the diffraction pattern was being mangled by the seeing.
Bloody hell, I have to find a dark sky site.
Ofcourse, the SDM structure is a pleasure in itself... the poles (interconnected pairs) slide easily into the Delrin blocks and the UTA just drops onto the 4 pairs of poles, and all that is required to secure the UTA to the poles is 4 levers which are simply swung into place. No stuffing around with awkward connection systems or dozens of thumbscrews here! Very easy and quick to assemble (after I got all the components out of the house and down the 4 dog crap laden steps to the yard!)