I took the family to the Victorian west coast on the weekend. Normally the 14" is the first thing I pack when I leave town, but the car was loaded to the gunwales with spouse, kids, cat etc (do Camrys have gunwales?). A perfect opportunity then to take my new 4" F/6 RFT refractor, which is built around this Surplus Shed lens:
http://www.surplusshed.com/pages/item/l3926.html.
I use it with a 20mm Antares eyepiece (2.3 deg FOV), and also a 13mm T6 Nagler (1.8 deg FOV). How would it compare to my usual light bucket? Pretty well as it turned out, although I found myself craving more aperture at various points.
These were some of the highlights from the evening:
- NGC 4945: the galaxy itself was very clear. I couldn't see the dark lane along one side though, which is easy in the 14"
- NGC 5128: the central dark lane was obvious with averted vision
- LMC: the cloud is brilliantly effective in a wide-field scope, and good structure was visible in the Tarantula
- NGC 2359 (Thor's helmet) & NGC 3199: I spotted both nebulae, but could not see any structure in either. They were only visible with averted vision.
- NGC 3766, 3532 and assorted other open clusters in Carina: these were all beautiful objects. 3532 is arguably more effective in this scope than a larger one, because it can all be fitted within the 2.3 degree field
- Omega Centauri: this was the other standout from the evening. The outliers were nicely resolved but not the core, and the wide field frames it very effectively
- NGC 362: it was clearly a globular, but I couldn't see any resolution.
Phil