Posts Made By: Dmitri Kulginov

Warren,

Thanks for the review!

I have a couple questions: Is it possible to actually find anything using this atlas? 7.6m is not terribly deep.

What is the scale of the charts? How many degrees per 1 cm?

Is it usable with red light?

Dmitri

Last Thursday I could not believe my eyes - the forecast promised a clear night! On my latitude this was the last dark night before August, and the darkness was only two hours long. I rushed to my dark site with my two 80mm refractors, an ST80 to finish its Messier survey, and an APO to enjoy.

It was a fabulous night in spite of terrible dew; a long dew cap made from a sitting pad helped to keep the dew off the objective glass. I looked at some 15 galaxies and 5 or 6 globular clusters, Jupiter (only a few degrees over the horizon, that's as good as it gets here this year) and the comet 73P. I find that I'm starting to enjoy pairs of distant galaxies most of all.

Dark skies made M51 clearly show its disc, I could almost see the spiral structure. When you realise that this galaxy is about size of our Milky Way, you can only stare in awe, no matter how small the aperture. Another awesome pair was 4361/4656. Two immense islands in the empty space, whose size defies imagination. 4565 showed its thin dark dust lane. I could see plenty of resolved stars in M13 and M3, much less in M5 and M92. There finally was that 13m star near M57.

The C component of the comet had a long tail, at least 3 degrees; the B was more round and dimmer.

I will miss the darkness...

Dmitri

Roger,

Galaxies in small apertures demand dark skies - try such a comparison at a dark site and you will not be disappointed.

Dmitri

What are the best eyepieces for daytime observing, if money is not an issue,
- for an 5" refractor?
- for an 8" SCT or Mak?

And why?

Dmitri

I have a new style CG-5 with steel legs, and one of the black 'tips', or 'cups', keeps falling off. I tried several different glues, none of them works for more than a week.

Any ideas?

Dmitri

How is it compared to Vixen/TeleVue?

Dmitri

How is the secondary mirror of Celestron 8" SCT held in its cell? Has anyone dissassembled the cell? Any pictures?

Dmitri

I'm probably going to Florida with my 3" refractor in the middle of July. Does anyone want to show me (and my budding AA friend) a good dark place with not too many crocs and his or hers biggest scope?

Dmitri

Is there a source for those?

Dmitri

In an achromat with C-like focal shift curve, the eye automatically picks the folding point as the point of the best focus (green light). Now, in a triplet APO with S-like curve, will there be two best focus points, one for each folding point - one for red, and one for blue? I'm primarily interestied in the real life experience, so doublet owners please don't bother

Dmitri