Posts Made By: Dannon Vick

Equipment:

N11 GPS
Panoptic 35mm
Nagler 22mm T4
Powermate 2" 2x

(Any filter must be a 2")

Targets:

Mostly DSO's, looking to improve all types of nebulosity. Increased planetary contrast a plus, but no major deal.

Observing locations:

Mostly dark skies (light domes no higher than 20 degrees) with good/great seeing and below average/poor transparency most of the year.

Budget
Looking for a lifetime filter and willing to pay for it.

Thanks,
Dannon

Sigh.

When I go to the optometrist for my eye exam, I'm administered eye drops that hyper-dilates my eyes for a few hours (I think it's Botox(tm) for my pupils). It occurs to me that this would be great thing to counteract the effects of an inadvertent light exposure at a dark sky site.

- Has this been discussed before?
- Are those eye drops a controlled substance?
- Who likes pizza?
- Am I way out on this eye drop thing?

I'm not really a beginner, but figured this would be the best place for this.

I currently own a N11 GPS, and I'm trading it in for a new 15.5" dob. I know that the straight-up light grasp calculation would be 11*11=121 and 15.5*15.5=~241 and 241/121=~1.99.

The new mirror will have and ultimate light grasp increase of nearly double, but shouldn’t I get further increases from a smaller central obstruction and fewer air/glass surfaces?

Am I on target? Would any of you be able to tell me about how much the perceived increase would be?

Thanks,
Dannon

I was doing some star hopping in Leo a couple of nights ago, looking for M65, 66 and NGC 3628 (which ended up framing nicely in the 35mm Pan, BTW).

I was a little high and caught a faint, edge on galaxy (mag 12?) about 2/5 of the way and in line with NGC 3371, 3373, M95, 98, 105.

I'm using a 16" f5.2 dob, about 60 power, clear skies, seeing was average, and good transparency.

Arrrrrggggh! It's the size of me head!

MARK PAJOR said:

guys have a question for you all, tonite looking at m42 in a 9.25 scope and a vixen 102ed m42 seemed to have color. lots of blue and green colors, thought for a second or two, i saw faint colors of pink, is this possible skies where awesome tonite very black and steady, so is this possible, my son saw it as well, i asked why tonite, didnt have the answer for him so i thought i would ask the experts

Word is that you can see some pink (blue and greens all "day" long), while I haven't heard of someone doing the pink in a 9.25, you saw what you saw. If it was your equipment or "averted imagination", it doesn't really matter IMO.

My new dob came with a 2" JMI Crayford focuser. I new to reflector-land, so would someone be able to tell me is this is good focuser. What's better, and is it worth the upgrade?

Thanks,
Dannon

How many of you are currently under 30? Anyone else feel old before their time because this is a more "chronologically advanced" hobby? (Please no "I was 26 when I started observing in 1897" or "my kid observes with us and he's 11!")

In January of this year, my wife and I purchased a new 15.5” truss-tube Dob from a vendor on Astromart and have since been plagued with problems, mostly collimation related. Wanting to end the madness, we recently bought a Glatter 2” / 1.25” barlowed laser collimator.

This weekend was a washout, so I spent several hours in an indoor, flat surface carefully aligning to what I though was perfect collimation. (I had the secondary perfectly in a sight tube, the laser striking the center of the secondary, down to the exact middle of the collimation doughnut, back up and returning to the same point on the secondary. With the Barlow attachment on, the target made a perfect ring around the laser.) I double checked my results by rotating the laser 360 degrees within the focuser, and racking the focuser in and out; perfect collimation was maintained each time.

When I went to return the scope to its full upright and locked position, I still had the collimator in, and noticed that the collimation went all out of whack. It seems that every time I made a vertical movement, the alignment is lost. When I return it down to the “collimation position” the collimation returns to perfect with no other adjustments.

While I have little idea what might be causing this, I suspect that the primary is too tight and not “floating” on its cells properly. Someone help me!