The cloud gods love me.
Must do, they gave me a stunning night to test the new 15mm GSO SV EP on.
Late Sunday afternoon a southerly change swept the clouds up north, dropped the temperature and cleared up the turbulence. Rolled the scope out onto the driveway in the early evening. I've reorganised my EP/Utility case with it's own Red light so I can see what I'm grabbing. I'll put up a pic cos it works well for a portable setup.
First up, waiting for Orion to rise, 47 Tuc, sky is still pale but track her down then load the 15mm. Nice fill the view pic. Still too light to see clearly, seeing about a 2, very stable. Sweep around the area and find NGC 330 & 346 then drop down onto 371 which I haven't viewed closely. Very open diamond star filled area.
Hunted for Tarantula but I can't seem to find a distinguishing star group that confirms viewing. Stellarium puts up an arc of 4 stars ( spider eyes ?) central to the group but no luck so far. I'll do a better base alignment next time and use the setting circles.
Darker by now, back to 47 Tuc and spend 20 mins on this finally viewing with the 6mm it is so good. I can see the granularity of the core and individual stars. the cluster looks like an explosion in stop motion. Seeing is excellent for city, transparency is making it hard to navigate though. 10" mirror is proving it's worth over the 8" I originally planned to use. The granular structure of the individual stars is quite apparent even in the 20 mm SV, the 15mm is excellent and I can just about count them, except there are just way too many.
Orion is now above the eastern treeline. Line it up in the 20mm and then try the 15 mm. Excellent. Enough mag to show greater detail but wide enough to encompass the major features. 12mm Plossl is good too, throw in the 6mm Plossl. Dust clouds fill the FOV, I have lanes within the dust, almost streamer like effects where the dust expands away from the central region. Colour is bluish tinged white. Biggiest problem with the 6mm ?? I have to keep jogging the scope to keep it in feild. I need to have a go at my azimuth bearings, too much 'stichion' at present making it hard to get fine adjustments. I have some large thin section bearings I may have a look at fitting from copier fuser bearings.
I've done a sketch of Orions Neb but having some scanning problems. Put it up when I resolve that.
Bed about 11.00 pm, not a bad night at all.
