Small observing run.

[Astroman]

Hi all,

Just whipped out the scope (yes I took it out of the observatory) to look at a few things.... Saturn was amazing, looked at it through my 4mm Plossl which gives about 360x mag, looked bloody amazing few times it cleared up and saw casinni div with ease and the edges looked heaps sharp, best views were through the 12.5mm though. Resolved a few doubles for fun (Castor, Rigel etc..), Flew the scope over to Orion and looked at the #37 :P (first time seeing this) Found it straight away go figure. Ended up looking at eta Carina and then back to orion and resolved 6 stars of the trapezium with ease. Came in for a chat. Had to tell someone :) not bad for a $50 telescope under light polluted skies and a street light shining over the back yard. :P

[janoskiss]

Could you pls tell us what $50 scope you saw all that with? ... or is that the new asking price for an 8" Dob?

[Astroman]

It is the 8" dob, I bought it for $50, although I have spent over $400 on getting it to where it is today. most of that was realumanising the mirrors.

[jackenau]

Is pretty good viewing tonight Andrew, pretty well looked at the same things, but mainly concentrated on eta carina region.

Don't you have a good view from inside your observatory?

Ken M

[Astroman]

To tell you the truth, NO. I am somewhat limited using the Dob in the dome. The walls are a bit to high to see anything low and the neighbours trees have grown quite a bit since the Observatory was errected. I am hoping some sweet talking to the wife will allow me to move the observatory into a more central area in the backyard. Something my wife doesn't really want.

The plan is to install a pier into the observatory, which will raise the scope to see lower, install an EQ6 (or similar) mount for goto's and get my rollers working properly on the dome.

Most of my observing is done looking almost directly up anyway, more or less on the celestial equator, you get a darker sky and quite a few objects throughout the year.

[ving]

now if we told lee at andrews com that you got your dob for $50 do you think hed match the price? :P

sounds like you had fun :)