Glenore Grove Report (28th May)

[astro_south (Andrew)]

We did have a get together on Saturday night with 6 IceInSpacers from SEQ in attendence :-

Mark (mhodson)
Paul (1ponders)
Andrew (Comet Hiunter)
Dan (grandpanancy)
Grant (Iddon)
and myself

We also had some local friends of Mark's drop by for some looks at the hightlights!

Equipment in attendence - 8" LX200 SCT, 80mm Megrez ED Triplet refractor, 12.5” Truss Dob, and a Celestron 80mm ED. Also noteworthy were Mark’s 31mm T5 Nagler and Andrew’s 17mm T4 Nagler.

Mark took piccies and will provide those eventually with his take of proceedings. In the meantime here is the way I saw the night........

The weather was great all day with only a hint of the fluffy stuff on the western horizon as I pulled into the metropolis that is Glenore Grove. I was first to arrive and had my dob constructed and cooling before any other travellers had appeared.

The others started arriving in a steady flow and all but Andrew (who was working) were there well before twighlight. In the early twighlight (~17:16) we caught an Iridium flare that lasted about 3 seconds. It started off at –7 and peaked at –9 mag…. impressive but a bit short.

There were some streams of high level cloud coming across as the night started that indicated some upper level disturbances. With this dicey seeing and with the moon rising just before 10pm the night veered away from serious observing and took on an equipment testing and social flavour. Giovanna supplied the lovely sandwiches (you realise that these are becoming expected now Mark!) and I am sure the hungry were thankful for this – I know I was.

For those that don't know...Paul arrived as the owner of an 8" LX200. Grant arrived a scopeless relative newbie and left Glenore Grove as an 8" LX200 owner (grinning from ear to ear I might add!). Paul left as an ex LX200 owner . It was an interesting sideline to the night and I think everyone there sensed Grant’s excitement at his new toy. Paul was incredibly thorough in his explanation of not only the scope, but all the gadgets as well…. auto focus this…screw that in there…push these buttons for a coffee – you LX200 guys know how it is

The targets for the night were the staples – Eta Carina Nebula, Omega Centauri, Ara Glob, M65 & 66, Jewel Box, Trifid, Lagoon, M4, Bug Nebula, Eight Burst Nebula, Ghost of Jupiter, Ring Nebula (under moon light) and of course Luna itself.

It was first light for Mark’s 31mm Nagler and it didn’t disappoint! I’m saving my pennies as I type If you ever get to look through one make sure you move your head around to take in all the view. When you get to the field stop you feel like you could just push in a bit closer to see what is around the corner. Mark will probably provide a thorough review once his observatory is up and running and he combines the Nagler with his Royce optics.

I will leave the others to fill in the gaps and provide their comments

[atalas]

Andrew that sounded like a fun night ,and an LX200 changed owners!
Im sure both the guys will be happy,the new LX200 owner with a new fun toy! and the old LX200 owner thinking about wich new toy to buy next!

Louie

[Striker (Tony)]

Good to see you all had a good night....sorry i couldn't attend but I had prior commitments.......

I will invite you all around once I get settled in my observatory.

Ok Paul....what's your next toy....

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Its a secret Tony......Shhhhhh

[Comet Hunter]

Apart from the cold and the average seeing it was a great night, I just need to remember to pack some extra thick socks next time

Thats ok you couldn't make it Tony - we couldn't have talked about you so much if you were there

Looking forward to the next gathering (almostly a monthly occurance now) and as it gets colder the nights will get better .....

Sounds like fun and a great night for all...

Hmmmm... 31mm t5 nagler eh' that'll double the price of my scope

[iceman (Mike)]

Excellent report Andrew! Can't wait to see Mark's pics! The 31 nag sounds awesome.. i'm sure geoff will chime in with his agreement

Good to see Grant became part of the buzzing clicking brigade.. after all our 'pursuasion' and he still didn't get a dob He did look through your dob didn't he, Andrew?

How did Dan's WO stack up? How did it compare to Mark's Celestron 80ED?

Great to read these reports, always makes me wish I was there! Look forward to more!

[grandpanancy]

Great report Andrew!

I think it's fair to say that there is definitely a problem with the optics in my Megrez. The celestron's star test images were significantly better and also showed significantly less chromatic abberation in focus.

I have contacted Daniel from Frontier Optics and hopefully the problem will be resolved. I will definitely keep everyone updated regarding the outcome.

I still had a great night though and found the views through Andrew's dob incredible.

Thanks to Mark for providing the location and everyone for putting on a great night!

Cheers,

Dan

Originally posted by grandpanancy
I have contacted Daniel from Frontier Optics and hopefully the problem will be resolved. I will definitely keep everyone updated regarding the outcome....

Cheers,

Dan

Sorry to hear your having problems...

I have dealt with Daniel from Frontier Optics on a number of occassions, he is excellent to deal with!

[mch62 (Mark)]

A bit of salesmanship going on here?
Truely you can see the Lunar landers

[mch62 (Mark)]

The cursed Megrez that is not performing the way it should.
Awaiting star tests.

[mch62 (Mark)]

That is a big one.

Astro Souths Newtonian is the center of attention.

[mch62 (Mark)]

The Megrez triplet background and a Celestron doublet Ed foreground let the hot air out awaiting star test comaparisons.

The results were very surprising and not what they should have been.

[mch62 (Mark)]

Sorry guys for the delay in getting the photos up or for doing a report.
Have been on the busy side .
Another great night had by all.
look forward to next month guys.
Any one else in the SE are welcome along for the next night.
Hopefully the observatory will have a scope in it by then.

Dan don't let the problem with the scope let you down.
I have been there big time, and feel for ya mate.
The guys who know me no what I mean .

For those reading this , and I am not trying to brag or down the Williams Optics Megrez but it does have an optical problem , and Dan asked me to check and compare with a know scope at the same time.
We used different eyepieces ranging from Radians to Orthoscopics and also changed diagonals , all to try to rectify the problem , but nothing made any difference..

As a better quality build and being a triplet ED as compared to my Celestron doublet Ed it should be superior in performance and colour correction.

I have to say thou the mechanicals of the scope are excellent from the focuser down to the baffling.
That focuser was so sweet and would love to have it on my scope.

The star tests were very baffling with the in and out of focus image being very different and throwing up large amounts of blue chromatic colour in the out of focus test and the inner rings being very unclear.
The focused star test also showed more blue surrounding the star as well than the doublet Celestron.
The rings were concentric and collimation appeared to be fine although even by the end of the night the image still appeared to be suffering from heat.

From the pictures you can see we inverted the scope for a while to try to lessen this problem but the Megrez still appeared to show images suffering from internal heat.

The Celestron star test was seen by all present to be more definet and stable and showing very little chromatic aberrations.
The outer and inner focus star concentric rings where that clear they showed individual rings with clear spaces between each.
No heat wavering could be seen in the rings or false colours.
(See my review )

Now the curious part , the Megrez image was brighter than the Celestron.
I didn't try this but the Megrez has one of those lovely Williams Optics diagonal and I only had an ell cheapo Sky Watcher diagonal.
This may be the cause of this, and will have to try Comet Hunters (Andrew) dialectic diagonal next time out.

I would not be to bothered by this problem with the Megrez as it is more than likely just a bad one that got through the QA.
Although for the premium price paid one would hope this is not the norm.

I hope you get it sorted quickly Dan and when you get a scope back please feel free to come out again just to make sure.

Mark

[iceman (Mike)]

Great pics Mark!

Nice to see your undies on the clothes line in the background, too

[mch62 (Mark)]

There my napies mike

[mch62 (Mark)]

As far as a review on the Nagler 31mm T5 , it has been review to death but we did a comparison to the Andrews 30mm 80deg on the night.

The Nagler -- one word sums it up WOW

The Andrews is a great eyepiece for slow scopes from f6 to f10 and beyond.
We compared it in the SCt scope and ít had a usable 75 deg field , with only the very outer showing flaring of the stars.

In the f6 Newtonian usable field is about 70degs.

The Nagler in all the scopes that night --- WOW you really have to move your head around to see it all and the stars are little pin points right to the edge , was the comment of the night.

So for those on a budget with a slower scope the Andrews is a goer , but for the perfectionest or fast scope wide field junky the Nagler is tops.

Is the Nagler worth over 6 times the price of the budget Andrews??? It depends on what your expectations are I suppose.

Mark

P.S. the Andrews is now up for sale .