Extreme Observing

Started by Rod Kaufman, 12/31/2013 07:03AM
Posted 12/31/2013 07:03AM Opening Post
Monday evening(12-30) in front of my home was quite exceptional in terms of seeing: 4/5 with six stars in the trapezium being visible in both broadband and UHC filters, a first in my 16" scope, so I decided to pull Thor's Helmut out of the muck with three filters, stacked, as follows: lumicon 0111 in the filter slide, DGM NPB in the paracorr, and the levenhuk CLS broadband filter screwed into a 24mm ES eyepiece. THAT pulled it out. Not too bad on the orion nebula, either. Especially through the rolling clouds obscuring the otherwise excellent transparency.
Barlowed my 10mm ethos on Jupiter with a GSO 2x barlow and caught one of the moons emerging from the limb. It's always nice to see that occur.
Ok, you guys can go back to your leather cases and UO whatevers...
Posted 12/31/2013 08:21AM #1
Recently discovered an 8" f/7 in town w/o filtration provided what a 6" f/8 reveals in the country per dso's, so now have a 12" f/5 town project and a 10" f/4.5 easily-portable instrument to play with whenever the snow melts (at my age my feet are too unstable to risk an icy fall). Despite some town light pollution, the Milky Way is still naked-eye visible from my backyard altho not so prominent as in the country; do you think nebula filters would be of worthwhile benefit under such circumstances (I've not tried them)? Out of town is still the typical jaw-dropping rural Kansas skies of which *Scotty* Houston wrote about in his former S&T column.