Glenore Grove - 09/03/05

[Comet Hunter]

Mark (mhodson) and I had a get together on Wednesday night out at his place, I took my 10" LX200GPS out with me. We did a bit of alignment work on Mark's developing observatory first up (will be a sight to see when fully in action :cool3: ), then after getting the business end of the night out of the way, thought we'd try out some of Mark's 2" gear in my LX200 and compare to some of my 1.25" Meade 4000 Plossl's. Not sure of the details of Mark's pieces we used - Hopefully Mark will fill in the details....

Started off around the SCP area with 47 Tuc. and the Tarantula. Having never used any 2" gear with my scope was was keen to see the difference over the standard 1.25" gear I have. The larger FOV's were great - especially the eye-relief!! Never had to move my head around so much :)!! Had two F-111's fly over heading out west, one chasing the other just after dusk, luckily didn't have the laser goin then :D. Popped in Mark's 2" barlow to have a look, focus was a little challenging - only a small crictical focus zone, but still managed a a clear view - I've only seen the Tarantula once before from here at home... was a great sight!!. Somewhere along the line we switched in my 40mm 1.25" into the 2" barlow, besides the little extra FOV the 2" offers, didn't seem to be too much difference in detail.

We then moved around to Jupiter, was still a little low at the time, and tried one of his 1.25" peices(Mark?? - helps to take both of the dust covers off though :lol: ) could barely make out the cloud bands, we then moved onto Saturn, this only confirmed how bad the conditions were at the time...very difficult to get any Cassini Division:mad2: Mark then seen a faint fuzzy east of Saturn so we had a look to see what it was ... seemed to be a mass of stars (an open cluster??) ..somewhere around Alnath I think looking at my chart... Then finished off with the good old M42 :jawdrop: Never seen the clouds spread out so far!!

Was a great night, thanks Mark! :thumbsup:

[Striker]

Great stuff Andrew and Mark.......wont be long till I get out and see you Mark.....

Wahooo Leyburn this weekend with Andrew and David, pending weather.

[Comet Hunter]

....

[edit] nevermind..wrong side of the sky :doh:

Update..... The faint fuzzy we spotted may have been M44..

[astro_south]

Count on me for a session out at Glenore Grove - very keen to get out there and observe and check out Mark's handywork with the fork mount and observatory progress. Also keen to see another 12.5" F6 scope in action. Nice report Andrew.

Hopefully the weather plays the game tomorrow night.....can't wait to get Striker out under some dark skies to continue my lesson on planetaries and extend that to galaxies . Will probably get an ear bashing about the virtues of goto on the 2 hour trip up to Leyburn though :)

[mch62]

Thanks for your help the other night Andrew.
We got that polar mark spot on.

I checked it with the EQ6 lined up on the marks and used the polar scope it has in the mount.
Bingo right in the field of view the 4 Octant alignment stars.
I have tried to use this polar scope before but gave up and always used the drift alignment method first , but it was interesting to see that it does indeed work if you are close to the stars in the first place.
Finding the 4 stars is a real challenge and you need a fairly dark site.
They are only in the 5.5 mag range and fill about a 4deg FOV.
The trick is not using a lot of aperture , because if you do ,picking out the stars amongst all the others is difficult.

The EP's you used were an Andrew 30mm 80deg 2" , 40mm GSO SV 2" and GSO 2x Barlow, UO Orthoscopics 25mm and a TV 4X Powermate.

Any one else from the forum in the SE QLD area want to pop out one night , is fine by me.
The observatory and mount won't be up and running for a little while yet but I am hoping in the next few months it will be operational.
Hope to pour the pier and base now things are all lined up on the deck floor.
That won't stop any one wanting to come for a visit and offer input into the project and a nights viewing in dark skies.

By the way if any one is curious on where on earth is Glenore Grove , it's in the Lockyer valley about 1/2 hr west of Ipswich Queensland and offers dark skies with only a bit of sky glow to 20degs from Brissy in the east .

Mark