Quote:
Originally Posted by bigjoe
This endeavour requires enormous patience, which I don't possess and you must have in abundance Steve!
It would be great to hear of others who have done their seeing homework on how to actually use their scopes and EP's for this task and not just the things I highlighted in another thread, there's so much more to being a capable observer for this; in short it requires a lot of skill and patience.
bigjoe.
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Yes, in my mind it is all about patience, persistence and practice.
My observing experience for each of the difficult test pairs that I referred to earlier, e.g. kappa Lep (2.0” separation and magnitude delta 2.5- actual delta 2.4) maybe of interest, as I guess it reflects patience and persistence.
Initial observation was negative. At this point I cycled through available higher powers (re-focusing carefully each time) to see if there are any signs that a different magnification would be better. After settling on a target magnification, I settled in for some patient observing to see if any transient improvement in seeing and/or transparency revealed anything. I did not record the time spent, but I doubt that I would have spent more than 30 minutes waiting and observing. At some point I saw a possible sighting of the secondary. From then on I have focused on this and waited for further sightings. Seven regular brief sightings of the secondary occurred in moments of better seeing in a relatively short period of time. At this point I have ceased observing the target to record the event and have then moved onto my next observing target.
In cases of difficult targets my personal discipline is to seek 7 sightings before I record it as a successful observation, just to minimise averted imagination.
A couple of other things in my mind that are important for success, that build on the things you have highlighted:
- Accurate focus is everything. I have a home made, soft touch 17:1 fine focus on each of my scopes. It allows for very accurate focusing.
- Rock solid, smooth mount that just “gets out of the way”. In my case, a TRex with home made long flexible manual drive cables.
- Observing chair and warm clothing. One sees more when sitting steadily at the eyepiece. Plus one needs to be comfortable to observe patiently for extended periods at the eyepiece.
- Knowledge built up over time of the apparent visual separation for different actual separations for each eyepiece.
Cheers
Steve.