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Old 04-12-2016, 10:50 AM
Tropo-Bob (Bob)
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Location: Cairns
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Light and easy observing session

Another new scope received on Friday. I brought a 70mm OTA for $99 (+ freight).

Last night, I put it through it paces starting of with the Moon and Venus in the twilight. The views were very good, as U would expect from a 70mm F13 scope, retro-fitted with an William Optical Diagonal and quality eyepieces. (Plossls, Orthos & 1 Brandon) Lunar features were sharp over the entire field and Venus phase was distinct with only a little purple showing at 120x.

I do not use the finder, but rather used a 30mm EP and some 50 years of experience in pointing telescopes to easily find the bright objects that I viewed. Only M33 gave me a small challenge.

A list of my viewing and brief descriptions are:

Orion Nebula Of course.
M78 Small nebula, but more easily visible than I expected.

M79 Small Globular, nice though
47 Tuc Like the Moon, it is a pleasure to see with any scope.
NGC 362 An easy Globular that is completely overshadowed by47Tuc

M31, M32 & M110 Always wonderful to see the more defuse M110.
M33 Large, but fainter due to its size. Best through the 30mm EP (I failed to find with a 25mm)
NGC 55 Easy and was about to look for others in the Sculptor Group when the clouds brought the evening to a close.

Pleiades Bright and nice to view without any edge distortion

Gamma Andromeda Easy, colourful double of unequal stars.
Rigel Seen with 75x. Seeing was terrible when viewing.
Sigma Orion Only saw 3 of the 4 stars, but still interesting
Beta Tucana Nice bright, wide triple. Love this one!
Rho Eridanus Bright, equal & wide double near Achemar.

I enjoyed my evening. I had to move the scope a few time to avoid lights due to a neighbour cutting down every tree in his yard. Hmm. However, this is a light scope, and though on an EQ5, it only needed a small counterweight so was easy to move.

I also found that at F13, some of my cheap Plossls performed every bit as well as Televue Plossls (these EPs were not the standard, cheap supas or GSO though - did not try any of them).

All in all, a very enjoyable evening on a rather cloudy night!
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Last edited by Tropo-Bob; 04-12-2016 at 02:09 PM.
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  #2  
Old 08-12-2016, 08:50 AM
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Tinderboxsky (Steve)
I can see clearly now ...

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Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Kingston TAS
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An interesting report, thank you Bob. Sounds as though the small Skywatcher performs quite well.
Your scope family continues to grow.

Steve.
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