Zubenel
20-02-2011, 11:45 PM
9 years of patience paid off this evening..... I decided to drag the scope into the back yard and it was memorable. At 52X seeing 6 in the Trapezium I quickly realised that splitting Sirius could be possible. Problem was it had not cleared the big gum tree http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/../vbiis/images/smilies/sad.gif which almost goes to the zenith in my back yard . So I spent some time in Orion. Sigma Orion with its group of 5 . Flame Neb . The nice binary Alnilam . Then across to the Rosette Neb. Visible by the absence of stars around the cluster. The UHC filter made a little improvement but not much but worked superbly on the Orion Neb as usual. By this time Sirius had come into view with a small drag of the dob to the North. After many conversations with Astro Ron http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/../vbiis/images/smilies/astronomer.gif about what configuration of eye piece would work best with my 10" F5.1 .I went straight to the highest mag that I could muster in my arsenal so I chose the 6mm Radian with 2 X Barlow giving 427X magnification!!. This yielded Sirius as a perfect tight Airy disk when slightly defocused. It took some time to get the right size disk as I knew the Pup was close but didn't know how close . Continued to scan around as it may have been hiding with in a diffraction spike but then bingo .. http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/../vbiis/images/smilies/eyepopping.gifthere it was. Undeniable. To confirm I got my 14year old son to confirm.http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/../vbiis/images/smilies/thumbsup.gif Then the neighbour and 2 other mateshttp://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/../vbiis/images/smilies/thumbsup.gifhttp://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/../vbiis/images/smilies/thumbsup.gifhttp://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/../vbiis/images/smilies/thumbsup.gif. . So a very successful and satisfying observing session. http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/../vbiis/images/smilies/happy19.gifhttp://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/../vbiis/images/smilies/happy04.gif Zubenel