Stonius
10-02-2022, 07:52 PM
I was lucky enough to get out on Monday night and though the forecast was not bad according to meteoblue (down to 1 arcsec) I was treated to the first time I've ever seen pretty much to the resolving limit of my 16".
Man, what a sight! I'm posting here because my darling long-suffering partner glazes over when I jabber on about astronomy and I figure you guys get it.
Anyway, I've been getting back into lunar observing, so once I'd set up I trained the scope on the 6 day old moon and was amazed at the flashes of detail and *texture I could see - there really seemed to be some fine grained texture on those bits that are usually look smooth.
TBH, I've never seen the moon like that. I was picking out features that were only half a kilometer across (ie, Rimae Bürg).
I don't usually do double stars, but I decided to have a look at Sirius to see if I could find Sirius B (the pup). I'd never had any success before so didn't know what to expect, and to my suprise, there it was - quite obvious and well separated from Sirius A. Likewise the other doubles I knew of separated easily - ACrux, Spica, Castor. It's a pity I didn't have the stamina to stick around till Mercury rose because it was perfect planetary conditions.
I've now made a list of 40 or so good 'tester' doubles with separations between 0.2 and 4" for if I'm ever in that situation again.
I guess usually I try to observe the planets from the city due to time constraints, which maybe why I usually have less than amazing seeing - or maybe just I'm starting to really get the hang of this telescope. But yeah, to see your instrument performing at its best is kinda amazing. It's also quite reassuring. When you know you're not seeing as much as you could, it's easy to wonder if the fault lies with the atmosphere or closer to home. Maybe you could have done the collimation a little better to eke out that extra bit of performance? But to see it doing it's thing it's great to know you've nailed it.
Anyway, the point of this post isn't to brag, but simply to say 'Isn't Astronomy amazing when everything goes right?'. You guys understand, I'm sure. It still blows my mind what you can see out there.
Cheers and clear skies everyone!
Markus
Man, what a sight! I'm posting here because my darling long-suffering partner glazes over when I jabber on about astronomy and I figure you guys get it.
Anyway, I've been getting back into lunar observing, so once I'd set up I trained the scope on the 6 day old moon and was amazed at the flashes of detail and *texture I could see - there really seemed to be some fine grained texture on those bits that are usually look smooth.
TBH, I've never seen the moon like that. I was picking out features that were only half a kilometer across (ie, Rimae Bürg).
I don't usually do double stars, but I decided to have a look at Sirius to see if I could find Sirius B (the pup). I'd never had any success before so didn't know what to expect, and to my suprise, there it was - quite obvious and well separated from Sirius A. Likewise the other doubles I knew of separated easily - ACrux, Spica, Castor. It's a pity I didn't have the stamina to stick around till Mercury rose because it was perfect planetary conditions.
I've now made a list of 40 or so good 'tester' doubles with separations between 0.2 and 4" for if I'm ever in that situation again.
I guess usually I try to observe the planets from the city due to time constraints, which maybe why I usually have less than amazing seeing - or maybe just I'm starting to really get the hang of this telescope. But yeah, to see your instrument performing at its best is kinda amazing. It's also quite reassuring. When you know you're not seeing as much as you could, it's easy to wonder if the fault lies with the atmosphere or closer to home. Maybe you could have done the collimation a little better to eke out that extra bit of performance? But to see it doing it's thing it's great to know you've nailed it.
Anyway, the point of this post isn't to brag, but simply to say 'Isn't Astronomy amazing when everything goes right?'. You guys understand, I'm sure. It still blows my mind what you can see out there.
Cheers and clear skies everyone!
Markus