Sunday, February 8, 2016
| Location: | Jon's place in Boulevard | |
| Weather: | Cool, wind was forecast, but it turned out okay. Seeing wasn't great; sky was a bit bright (no moon). | |
| People: | Jon, me | |
| Equipment: | UC18 (2nd dark with the refigured 17.5", first with ServoCAT installed), Jon broke out Junior (his 25"). At one point mine looked like a baby giraffe nursing. | |
| Goals going in: | Test out the GoTo, hope nothing breaks. |
Summary (equipment)
A good night. Actually a great night. Equipment was stellar. From breakdown upstairs to the car was only about 10 minutes. That's fantastic. The base, with new motors and batteries was awkward and heavy. I see severely strained back unless I get some furniture-moving braces or something.
Setup was quick. A single alignment held through the night. The ServoCAT/Nexus/DS Browser/SkySafari worked flawlessly all night, which was something of a surprise for first light. I did short out some of my wiring at the end of the night, but the only damage was too the wires. Easy fix.
It was particularly nice to be over near Jon's setup with the iPad, click on an object in the map, click Go To, hear a soft whir, walk over to the scope, and see the object in the eyepiece. I think I need to make a video of that. VERY cool.
Frankly, the SkySafari/GoTo combination is by far the easiest way to stumble around the sky. The ServoCAT clutches are easy to disengage, which made pushing the scope through the galaxies in Leo (which is how galaxy cluster should be observed, not by a motor taking you through it). Easy engage/disengage while maintaining alignment is simply a must.
Tracking was excellent. Go To was a bit off-center, but in the field of view.
Need to figure out how DSB/SkySafari/Local Synch all interact for refined alignments.
Summary (observations)
Orion Nebula was Orion Nebula (always awesome). Andromeda was a pleasant surprise (it normally is only a uniform light gradient) with the dust arc rather clear.
Caroline's Rose was particularly pretty. M82 was nice and mottled.
The Nebula was big and bright with strong contrast. I didn't expect this. w/ and w/o the OIII.
Pinwheel Galaxy. Spindle Galaxy, Eskimo neb, Leo Triplets, a large number of galaxies in Leo using GoTo and PushTo. M46 and M47 (M46 is definitely one of my favorites, a planetary in a nice open cluster). Globular NGC 2298.
Jupiter was low and the seeing bad. Whirlpool was low and looked okay. Looked a bit better in Jon's (but I seem to remember a great view of it years back with an 8" or 11" (maybe it was just the first time seems best)).
Saw the Horsehead Nebula through Jon's. Subtle, but there.
(Note from the future: the complexity of the ServoCAT/Deep-Sky-Browser/Nexus/SkySafari interfaces eventually nearly broke my enthusiasm for the hobby. At some point the Azimuth Encoder failed. The Nexus DSC pretty much saved the scope for me (it's very good interface allowed me to debug the Az encoder error. It works nicely now (fixed it in 2020).)