... in the advantages of higher power viewing, that's the lesson I got - again, twice in the same session last night. I was out with my 5"F6.5 achro refractor doing what may be my "farewell for the year" tour of Cygnus (it's going under the trees in my back yard."
The first lesson came while I was looking for NGC 6940. I found an asterism in the area that looked somewhat like a raccoon. The image at 69X was sparsely populated, showing maybe a couple dozen stars or so. But noticing a very soft "glow" in one of the "hind legs" I switched to 118X to take a closer look at it. That was the first lesson. When I did just that, several dozen stars just popped into view all around the leg, many of them concentrated in one of the "joints" (may have been NGC6940 but I'm not sure). A couple dozen more stars also showed up in the second leg. My thought was "who turned on the lights?" The image at 118X was beautiful, like soft Christmas tree lights....
The second lesson came while viewing M29. With just 5" of aperture I just see the outline normally and that's what I was seeing at 118X. When I hiked the power up to 236X, I noticed, or at least thought I noticed a line of dim stars cutting the box in M29 on a ENE-WSW line.
It's interesting when I recalled that the guides I read as I was starting into the hobby as a teen advised us to use low power to pack in the light.... 8O
The first lesson came while I was looking for NGC 6940. I found an asterism in the area that looked somewhat like a raccoon. The image at 69X was sparsely populated, showing maybe a couple dozen stars or so. But noticing a very soft "glow" in one of the "hind legs" I switched to 118X to take a closer look at it. That was the first lesson. When I did just that, several dozen stars just popped into view all around the leg, many of them concentrated in one of the "joints" (may have been NGC6940 but I'm not sure). A couple dozen more stars also showed up in the second leg. My thought was "who turned on the lights?" The image at 118X was beautiful, like soft Christmas tree lights....
The second lesson came while viewing M29. With just 5" of aperture I just see the outline normally and that's what I was seeing at 118X. When I hiked the power up to 236X, I noticed, or at least thought I noticed a line of dim stars cutting the box in M29 on a ENE-WSW line.
It's interesting when I recalled that the guides I read as I was starting into the hobby as a teen advised us to use low power to pack in the light.... 8O
Mark Costello
Matthews, NC, USA
"I hear you're mechanically inclined. Did you ever do anything with perpetual motion?"
"Yeah, I nearly had it a couple of times."
