We finally got a clear night last Saturday, so it was time to break out the "Droughtbuster" for some extended viewing. I invited a friend over with his ETX-90 for a bit of a comparison run. We were both running off laptops, Dennis was using a later version of "The Sky" while I was using "Cartes du Ciel" Dennis brought over his Meade eyepiece kit (40mm down to about 6mm) and I had my Celestron kit (32mm down to 4mm (Yeah I hear you, alot of good that eyepiece will be
)) We setup just on sundown (I did a automatic setup and let the machine do its thing) and retired for half an hour or so for rehydration, selecting my alignment stars when I came back.I thought I'd damaged one of my eyepieces as I couldn't get my first star to focus without flaring. Even when I tried it in Dennis' scope it still flared. Not a good start. It was only then we realized that we were both aligning on the same star and trying to see it through some palm fromds. Duhh
While the transparency was great the seeing was only so-so at about 1.5 to 2.5 out of 5, improving as the night went on. First off we headed down to Tarantula. Easily resolvable in both scopes, but certainly more detail and luminosity in my 8". With me using the 40mm and Dennis using a 20mm, we decided that with that combination we had very similar FOV. We used this for many comparisons during the night.
From there we went to Tuc 47. Beautiful in both scopes, though a bit misty in the 90. I decided to pop in some higher eyepieces, 32, 26, 32+barlow, 26+barlow. Gobsmaking. Dennis was pushing resolution at anything higher than about 12mm (for this night anyway). Before we finished in this area we checked out a few of the globular clusters close by Tuc. That little 90 does a surprisingly good job on pretty dim objects. Resolution was a bit poor but you could definately make them out as Globs.
Thanks to the trees, we couldn't see anything to the north, almost to zenith, nor anything east below about 45 - 50 degrees, so we had a bit of a wait for Vela and Carina to come up. And with the house and trees blocking around 20 degrees up from the west We decided to check out the area around Canis Major and Puppis for open clusters etc. I was pleasently surprised at the wealth of quite spectacular open clusters readily available in this area. Using "Cartes" is a dream for this sort of viewing.
I decide to try for NGC55, 253 and 300 (pushing the house and tree line). Easily found 55 and 253, the palm won on 300. Considering how low they were and the amount of street lighting in that direction I was suprised I was able to see them so clearly. So I though how many others can I find. More than 15 in a fornax, sculptor area in about 25 minutes. Woohoo. I was really impressed with the accuracy of the meade goto tonight. Dennis was unable to find any with his 90, (he thinks he say 3 but he wouldn't put the house on it) but I believe he would be more successful with darker skies. I get a fair amount of LP at home. By this time Vela was more visable so Dennis suggested we try a cluster to the western end of Vela (can't remember the designation, and damn I forgot to gheck out gamma Vela again). Very nice open cluster.
We swung back to SMC again for a final look before Dennis went home. What a fabulous patch of sky. There is just so much to see in there. I pushed the LX right up to a 10mm eyepiece (too far really) to catch some of the smaller, but very bright clusters around the Tarantula. Great stuff.
Dennis headed home then and I broke out the ToUcam and ran a few shots of of Jupiter. He was jumpin' round like a bellydancer after a 3 day caffeine binge, still a couple of the shots turned out OK, (check solar system posting).
By this time Eta Carina was becoming visible. Crunch time. Time to give the 300D its first DSO session. Whipped of about a dozen shots, prime focus with 6.3 reducer, at various exposures (check Deep Sky for 1 unprocessed image). Some of them looked promising in the preview screen of the camera. While it was set up I decided to give the tarantula a go as well, so popped off another 10 or so shots. Hopefully I'll have some time to do a bit of processing this week to see how they turned out.
Finally decided to turn in around 12:30,(my eyes were going "Go sleep you selfish p*ic*, we're tired!"). why are we slaves to our bodies. I still hadn't sated my minds addiction. I guess the bodies selfish like that.
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Review Saturday Night Viewing - A good time was had by all
