Travels with a Tele Vue--a Pacific Review of the TV-85

[ARTICLEIMGR="2"]It’s one thing to be crazy about astronomy, to have thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment in the garage and basement; and quite another thing to be able to take a set up with you and to observe far from home. In preparation for a summer trip to Hawaii, I sought the finest possible travel telescope, settling on a Tele Vue TV-85 refractor as I described in my review, “Battle of the High-End Refractors”.

This vacation was to celebrate 25 years of marriage to my wife Joyce, so we brought our four children (19, 15, 10 and 3) with us to spend a week in Maui, then five days each on Kauai and the Big Island of Hawaii. I planned to view the Sun from the top of Haleakala on Maui; to spend an evening viewing the equatorial sky from a beach at the southern tip of Maui; and to observe from the Onizuka Center for International Astronomy on Mauna Kea, the Big Island of Hawaii.

First, what to pack. I felt that the TV-85 carrying case did not protect the telescope adequately, so I instead used the black heavy fabric case from an Astro-Physics Stowaway, which had more padding, more room for accessories, and a two straps to hold the telescope firmly in place. Into this I put my TV-85, a Tele Vue Maxbright diagonal, and a Coronado MaxScope 40. To minimize weight I limited myself to three eyepieces, these being the Coronado Cemax 25 and 12 mm, and a Tele Vue Panoptic 19. I reasoned that the Cemax are relatively wide field eyepieces, and preferable for hydrogen-alpha viewing. I judged that my 22 mm 2 inch Nagler would be more than I could carry, a decision that I later regretted. I also took the screws and tools needed to set the telescopes up on my Gibraltar mount, which I mailed ahead of time to our first condominium; my Sky Commander computer, a finder, a solar filter for the Tele Vue, and a red flashlight. Star charts went into the zippered compartment.

We arrived in Maui on a Saturday; Sunday night, after watching July 4 fireworks at Lahaina town, we stopped near Ma’alaea to take a break. Looking south over the Pacific, I was struck by the beauty of the very, very dark sky. I knew that fine observing was in store for me. On Monday my oldest son Ben and I scouted out several likely locations for observing. Tuesday night I drove to the most opportune location, at La Perouse Bay on the southwestern tip of the island. I left our condo under clear skies at 9:45 and arrived at the bay around 10 pm. By 10:10 I was observing, but noted a few wisps of cloud drifting in from the northeast.

Now, it happens that the weather pattern in Maui runs from northeast to southwest. By 10:30 the whole sky was clouded. Back to the condo...

The next day we drove to the top of Haleakala, “House of the Sun”, the volcano that dominates east Maui, arriving at mid-day. Here I had the opportunity to use the Tele Vue at several observing sites to examine the formations on the bottom of the crater--which is the size of Manhattan! Now, how I wished I had brought my 2 inch eyepiece. The Tele Vue provided the extraordinary quality views for which these telescopes are famous, the depth of field was outstanding, sharpness and clarity were excellent. I followed large birds a half mile off and studied the stones and plants on the wall of the crater. Views at 31x with the Panoptic were outstanding for clarity and faithful color.

I also put the solar filter on and saw a few sunspots. Hoping that the altitude would help with hydrogen-alpha viewing, I put the Coronado on the mount but was disappointed to find that views of the sun were poor, no doubt due to the turbulent atmosphere as the island warmed up in the tropical sun.

The next night, I went again to La Perouse Bay, arriving at 10 pm. This time the clouds did not come. The parking lot was of crushed black lava. There was a station wagon off a hundred feet or so with sounds of romance issuing forth. I ignored the lovers and set my rig up, calibrated the Sky Commander on Polaris--which hung lower in the sky than I had ever seen it before--and Antares, then set out to view Messier objects in Scorpio and Sagittarius, which are not visible from my home in Massachusetts.

It was incredible. These were the darkest skies I had ever seen, being 2000 miles out in the middle of the Pacific. Honolulu, the only close city, was well over the horizon and the lights from the south Kihei section of Maui were blocked by hills. I could see more stars in the sky than I imagined existed. The Milky Way was just that, a shimmer of white light across the sky. Under such fortunate circumstances my little Tele Vue performed superbly. I could see more stars and more detail in M13 under these skies with the Tele Vue than I could see in my (moderately light-polluted) home skies with an 11 inch Starmaster Zambuto reflector.

For an hour I strolled among the Messier objects, viewing one after another with delight, studying them intensely. The crispness and clarity of the TV-85’s images continue to astonish me in my memory. Stars were perfectly etched dots on a black background, there was no widening of the images laterally. It was perfect telescopy, and I did not feel hindered by lack of aperture. Indeed, the opportunity to study wider fields in the crowded sky perfectly suited the little refractor; it would have been so nice to have the 2 inch Nagler. I only wished I were not alone with such beauty.

Be careful what you wish for. There came a beat-up pickup truck with four noisy teenaged boys crammed into the seat. The unmistakable odor of cannabis and sounds of hip-hop drifted across the lot. I was worried about being robbed so I thought I would be proactive; who could mug a friendly astronomer? I called out to them, “Dudes, I’m looking at the stars, wanna take a peek?”, and was pleased when one of them said, “Yeah, whatcha looking at?”. He came over, introduced himself as George, and told me I had nothing to fear. I showed him M13. Even in his drug-befuddled state, he was impressed. I took him across the tail of Scorpio, explaining to him that I never had seen these beautiful objects before either.

After a few minutes he rejoined his party and I resumed my search. A half hour later the boys drove off, then the clouds rolled in, so I took my telescope down and drove off after almost two hours of observing.

The joys of the night were not over, however. I was treated to seeing three lovely Hawaiian lasses skinny-dipping at Ahihi Cove as I drove by; they were as comely as Botticelli’s Venus. Seeing me stop to watch, they called out and waved delightedly before running farther out into the surf, which blocked my view of their beauty. Clouds blocking stars, surf blocking girls; water was the curse of astonomy and voyeurism alike that night. It is hard to know which Heavenly Bodies were more lovely that night, those that I saw with my telescope to such detail, or those that I saw so briefly at Ahihi Cove.

Ten days later, as the vacation neared its end, we were on the Big Island of Hawaii. Knowing that Saturday July 17 was a new moon, I had arranged our travels so that we were on Mauna Kea, driving from Volcanoes National Park to our hotel at Kona along the infamous Saddle Road, which runs east-west between the Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea volcanoes, through fields of lava and devastation.

We came off the main road and up the incredibly steep grade to the Visitor Information Station of the Onizuka Center for International Astronomy, where I unpacked my Tele Vue, setting the Gibraltar up on a promising spot. It was about a half hour before sunset. I was delighted a few minutes later when a caravan of cars arrived and disgorged people, telescopes and the paraphernalia that goes with them. It turns out that I had unwittingly invited myself to the monthly observing session of the Hilo Astronomy Club.

Think for a moment of what it is to be a member of the Hilo Astronomy Club. Your hometown, which has severe code restrictions intended to minimize light pollution, is a small city in the middle of the Pacific. Honolulu is even farther over the horizon than it was in Maui. A nearby mountain is 13,700 feet tall and has a Visitor Information Station, equipped with several fine telescopes for public use, at 9300 feet. It is only an hour’s drive from your home at one of the finest observing venues on the planet. Do I exaggerate when I call the members of the Hilo Astronomy Club the most fortunate amateur astronomers on Earth?

At the Visitor Information Station I met Doctor Jack Summers, who had his Astronomy 101 Class from the University of Hawaii, Hilo, up on the mountain to observe. Between the Hilo Astronomy Club members, the Visitor Information Station’s staff, and Dr. Summers, I had the company of a half dozen dedicated astronomers--professional and avocational--on the best viewing location on Earth, with my TV-85 and some other awesome telescopes (including two 16 inchers, a Meade SCT and a home-made Zambuto reflector).

At that latitude and altitude darkness fell in moments, and it became very dark, and very cold, very quickly, so I went in to the Visitors’ Center and bought a Mauna Kea cap. The sky was even more perfect than it had been at La Perouse Bay. Jupiter hung low in the west so we first observed this only planet of the night. The Jovian cloud bands were clearer than I had ever seen. Again, the views from my TV-85, under such perfect skies, exceeded what I was accustomed to seeing in much larger telescopes at home. With my new friends I re-studied the Messier objects I had seen 10 days before, then was asked, “have you seen Omega Centauri?” I had not, and remarked that I did not know why I was to worry about such an object as a faint star in the Centaur. Before I could get my Tele Vue trained on the star, Michael called me to his truss reflector, the one with the 16 inch Zambuto mirror. The joke was on me, of course, because Omega Centauri is not a star, but rather a globular cluster that excels even M13 in number of stars, in clarity, in brightness. As I took my first look, standing on a ladder, a satellite passed in front of Omega Centauri. Seeing such a cluster for the first time from Mauna Kea at 9300 feet, as a satellite zipped across the field of view, through a 16 inch Zambuto telescope--how can I describe the experience?

I adopted a modus operandi of finding objects that others were viewing, studying them in my Tele Vue, then ceding the Tele Vue to another observer while standing in a short line to view the object at higher power, through more aperture. In all of this, the Tele Vue performed brilliantly. I compared it side-by-side with two similar refractors, these being a StellarVue 80 mm f/9 achromatic and an Orion 80 mm f/7.5 ED apochromatic. Both of the other telescopes performed well, but the clarity of image, the number of stars seen in clusters, the brilliance and precision of the stars, the hues of the stars and the freedom from false color, all of these were best in the Tele Vue. Other observers, including the owners of the other 80 mm refractors, were similarly impressed by the performance of my Tele Vue. Borrowing a 35 mm Panoptic from a fellow observer, I was swept away by the star clouds in the Milky Way, and once again wished I had not saved 24 ounces of weight by leaving my 22 mm Nagler at home.

Alas, this came to an end too soon, my two middle children were enjoying the views but my wife and three year old were growing bored and cranky in the car (Ben had flown home two days earlier to return to work). So around 10:30 we took down the Tele Vue, put everything in the back of the rental van, warned my new friends that I would be driving with lights on (as I could not find how to use the parking lights on an unfamiliar van) and headed down the mountain. Joyce drove; I was too tired, and too enraptured, to do so.

An hour and a half later, back at the hotel, I wrote up my observing notes and reflected on what I had seen. It had been a truly memorable session, and the extraordinary quality of my tiny Tele Vue had contributed much to my enjoyment, and to that of other observers.

What lessons did I learn from my travels? First, the choice of equipment is crucial when one can’t run back to the garage to get something. I was right to ship my Gibraltar mount out; it is perhaps “too much” mount for the TV-85, but it was rock-steady. Having Sky Commander was even more important than at home, as I was able to quickly find objects in the novel (for me) equatorial sky. Although limiting myself to three eyepieces minimized my usual fiddling around, I would have profited by bringing my 22 mm Nagler.

Second, careful planning paid off. By knowing where to observe in advance, by setting up several nights when my family would tolerate my obsession even while on the vacation of a lifetime, I was rewarded with two observing sessions that were truly outstanding and which will remain in my memory, I hope, forever.

Third, the TV-85 was an ideal choice for a travel telescope. It was light, easy to use, free off any need for adjustments, and provided outstanding optical quality.

I can’t wait until the Venus Transit of June 6, 2012; this will be visible from Hawaii, and I plan to be on Mauna Kea to watch it. I’ll probably bring my TV-85, which is my favorite telescope and now sports a Mauna Kea patch, along with whatever hydrogen-alpha scope I own in eight years. But this time, I will bring my 2 inch eyepieces--of that you can be sure.

Click here for more about the Televue 85. -Ed.