Last Saturday morning, I drove some 50 miles to one of the lesser "local" dark sites, a location on a ridge just off the Applachian Trail. The forecasts were mixed and it was a last moment decision so I took my largest "grab and go" scope, an 8" Starsplitter Tube Dob. I got on the road a bit later than I had hoped to and arrived at the site shortly after 12:30 a.m. EST, about half an hour after moonset. The limiting magnitude there was approximately 6.0 and the temperature was 19 degrees.
Some of my observing buddies went to a more distant site so the big Dobs were elsewhere. The fellow who I observed with brought his 6" achromat (he also owns an 8" achro and 12.5 and 22" Dobs). However, even with what by today's standards are rather small instruments we were able to see quite a bit. The Double Cluster, M1, and M42 were displayed nicely through the 6" refractor as were a number of galaxies in Leo. Somewhat difficult objects like the planetary nebula NGC 1514 (the Crystal Ball Nebula) and the Wolf-Rayet bubble/emission nebula/reflection nebula NGC 2359 (Thor's Helmet) were easily visible in both of our scopes with the aid of a narrowband filter.
M81 and M82 were framed extremely well at 94x with my 13mm Tele Vue Ethos. The Leo Trio/Triplet looked quite good too. Once again, the Ethos showed commonplace DSOs in a new light, so to speak. M47 took on a whole new aspect and M46 was simply wonderful, along with a very prominent NGC 2438. I enjoyed viewing many other old deep-sky chestnuts such as M35 and NGC 2158, M37, M41, M42, M50, M93, and NGC 2362 through the Ethos. I'd brought along a number of eyepieces but ended up using just the Ethos and three others - a 35mm Tele Vue Panoptic, an 8.8mm Meade Series 5000 UWA, and lastly a 3-6mm Tele Vue Nagler zoom eyepiece.
The seeing was rather good and, by the end of the cloud-shortened session, Saturn was stunning. I used the 3-6mm Nagler zoom and was able to boost the magnification up to 400x for an excellent view of the almost edge-on planet and rings.
So was it worth driving one hundred plus miles and enduring sub-freezing temperatures for over three hours? As a suddenly famous political figure of late would likely say, you betcha.
Dave Mitsky
Some of my observing buddies went to a more distant site so the big Dobs were elsewhere. The fellow who I observed with brought his 6" achromat (he also owns an 8" achro and 12.5 and 22" Dobs). However, even with what by today's standards are rather small instruments we were able to see quite a bit. The Double Cluster, M1, and M42 were displayed nicely through the 6" refractor as were a number of galaxies in Leo. Somewhat difficult objects like the planetary nebula NGC 1514 (the Crystal Ball Nebula) and the Wolf-Rayet bubble/emission nebula/reflection nebula NGC 2359 (Thor's Helmet) were easily visible in both of our scopes with the aid of a narrowband filter.
M81 and M82 were framed extremely well at 94x with my 13mm Tele Vue Ethos. The Leo Trio/Triplet looked quite good too. Once again, the Ethos showed commonplace DSOs in a new light, so to speak. M47 took on a whole new aspect and M46 was simply wonderful, along with a very prominent NGC 2438. I enjoyed viewing many other old deep-sky chestnuts such as M35 and NGC 2158, M37, M41, M42, M50, M93, and NGC 2362 through the Ethos. I'd brought along a number of eyepieces but ended up using just the Ethos and three others - a 35mm Tele Vue Panoptic, an 8.8mm Meade Series 5000 UWA, and lastly a 3-6mm Tele Vue Nagler zoom eyepiece.
The seeing was rather good and, by the end of the cloud-shortened session, Saturn was stunning. I used the 3-6mm Nagler zoom and was able to boost the magnification up to 400x for an excellent view of the almost edge-on planet and rings.
So was it worth driving one hundred plus miles and enduring sub-freezing temperatures for over three hours? As a suddenly famous political figure of late would likely say, you betcha.
Dave Mitsky
Chance favors the prepared mind.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
