It finally happened yesterday. After many months of research into what sort of scope I wanted, preparing budget proposals, enduring a few parliamentary question times and a senate enquiry, the minister for finance gave the big
for the purchase of a new telescope. Goodbye 40mm refractor, helloooo Saxon 8" Dob.
I took it out for its first dance around the sky last night. It was a full moon and the seeing was average to below average, but wild horses couldn't have dragged me away from the scope last night.
First I wanted to show my 4yo daughter the Moon and Jupiter before bedtime. I set up for the moon with the small aperture hole in the end cap to reduce some of the brightness. The whole moon fit nicely in the FOV with the 25 mm eyepiece. Very bright and very flat looking on account of it being a full moon. My daughter had a gander through the eyepiece. "Did you see the moon?" I asked. "Yeah" she said. I knew she did because I saw the bright spot from the eyepiece go straight into her eyeball as she looked through the eyepiece.
OK, on to Jupiter with the 10mm eyepiece. "Jupiter is another planet like Earth and you can see four moons around it". Of course she wouldn't have had a clue what I was talking about and probably thought I was a raving lunatic.
"Did you see Jupiter?"
"Yeah"
"OK off to bed, Daddy's got work to do"
[Start the serious observing]
Back to Jupiter. Two darker belts were visible (Northern and Southern equatorial belts) . The focus was drifting in and out like crazy due to the poor seeing conditions. I could occasionally make out the equatorial belt and a northern and southern temperate belt. Four moons were visible, Europa and Io visible in the upper left FOV, Ganymede and Callisto in the lower right of the FOV.
Then it was on to the Southern Cross region.
- Eta Carina: no nebula visible only the stars.
- IC 2602 (Southern Pleaides)
- NGC 3532
- alpha Crux double
- NGC 4755 (Jewel Box), I could just make out a bit of red colour on a large star near the middle.
I then swung the scope around to Scorpius for a quick squiz at Antares. It looked slightly orange in the bright moonlight.
Now on to one of my favourites, NGC 5139 (Omega Centauri). In the 25mm eyepiece it looked like a smudge. Drop in the 10 mm eyepiece and I could just start to make out stars in the cluster. I should imagine this will look a lot more impressive when it is not a full moon!
Other things I checked out:
- M13 in Hercules, a fuzzy blob.
- NGC 6231 in Scorpius, Scorpius Jewel box
So far I am very happy
with the telescope. Pity about the full moon, but like I said nothing was going to stop me taking the scope out on its first night, except maybe clouds or rain
Roll on the new moon!!
the 8 inch will really be in it's element.
