Hi everyone!
Visited a friend overnight in a beautiful little town in the Southern Highlands in NSW. This is the first time I've visited her and it gave me the opportunity to try my 10" truss dob out for only the second time in dark skies. I'm posting this in "equipment" because that's mostly what this post concerns!
Before I mention the equipment stuff, I'll just mention the dark skies thing. The moon was, of course, up last night and I don't ever recall being so anxious for that damn (gorgeous) rock to set. My friend didn't wait up - craters and moon-washed views of Orion didn't impress - but after the moon was well below the horizon, the skies began to glow for me. Amazing. Possibly darker than Bargo. If there was a light bowl from Wollongong or Campbelltown or Sydney, I couldn't see it. I sat there till almost 4am, spoilt for targets, behind this lovely house, listening to Radio National (Bush Telegraph, would you believe) on the laptop, with the horses hanging out in the property's paddock and the kelpie barking occasionally at the radio and the red light. A long way from Bondi, let me tell you. LMC and SMC suddenly emerged from the moonglow around 1.30, and the Milky Way just seemed to get brighter and brighter. Despite all the apparent targets, I kept being drawn back to the glow of Carina, and particularly the Carina nebula which, towards 3.30am, was simply spectacular at 120x. 47 Tuc is a very nice little (big) object too, that cheeky little glob.
Two days ago I observed M104 (Sombrero) from light-polluted Sydney skies from which I could make out the dust lane with averted vision. I thought this was very cool and looked forward to checking it out from dark skies. Well, it was nice last night too but still very faint for a Messier in dark skies (I'd have thought...) - I'm so new at this that I'd like your objective thoughts on the matter! I then searched for galaxies in Virgo for 45 mins or so, but found only one very faint thing with scant detail. Again, I would have thought that objects like M86 and M87 and all the rest of them would be easy to spot from inky black skies. (Omega Centauri, 47 Tuc and Tarantula were all nice too but surprisingly much less bright at the eyepiece than I expected for such dark skies. But perhaps you have to help me adjust my expectations of what 10 inches can do.)
And this brings me to the 10" SW truss. I've only just decided to write about my neurotic concerns about the thing since a friend came over a few days ago (one of about 5 so far who I've quietly introduced to the sky for IYA2009) and commented on how dusty the primary mirror looked when I shone a torch at it. Yes, yes, I know - probably paranoia, right? But I'm going to make you shudder when I tell you that I took a tissue to the secondary and cleared up a patch of it and it did look somewhat better. But I'm not sure whether it's dust on the primary or a sort of intrinsic graininess in the mirror. So is it a flaw in the mirror, or is it worth cleaning my primary (not with a tissue)? Perhaps graininess is an artefact of all mirrors? In other words, is it a flaw, or my paranoia, dust, or a mixture of all three?
The only other concern I have is the stickiness of the truss rods. Those of you with a skywatcher truss may be able to help me with this. I loosened the small black hex screws as well as the big silver nuts and the movement of the truss was still not smooth. Should I be concerned? A flaw or my paranoia?
I hope you can forgive my newbie neurosis. I am having a wonderful time regardless of these small challenges and am looking forward to my first eyepiece purchase!
Have a great weekend
- DSB