[AZ-Observing] Equipment Notes from the Weekend
- From: Tom Polakis <tpolakis@xxxxxxx>
- To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 18:09:50
What a nice observing weekend! Nicer still to see it bracketed by cloudy
days. Friday night I did a solo run to Vekol, where several folks were set
up. Saturday, Jenn and I eventually made it out to Sentinel. Yes, we were
the ones who drove in after twilight -- sorry. Here are some random notes
about the equipment. I'll post separately about the observations. Feel
free to correct my many errors. Opinions expressed herein do not
necessarily represent the views of AZ-Observing or its management.
The tour of the field Saturday night was so interesting that it took twice
as long as we'd anticipated. Several scopes were new to me, at least.
Matt Luttinen set up his "grab and go" 12 1/2-inch on a nice alt-az mount
that was instantly recognizable as Matt's work. Whether or not 12 1/2
inches constitutes "grab and go" is up for debate. I was thinking more
along the lines of my Pronto. His Argo Navis digital circles were not
working as we arrived. His quote: "I am a slave to technology." He had
them up and running within the hour.
Lynn Blackburn was using a 16-inch Starfinder that he said was too
inexpensive to pass up. He had fixed the altitude bearing problem, I would
guess quadrupling its production size. The tube assembly is transported in
and out of the truck by leaning it on the truck bed and sliding as it
weighs in at 95 pounds. As Lynn pointed out, "they did pretty much
everything wrong with the scope." The optics are fine, however. It will
be interesting to watch it evolve.
Rick Rotramel has been building a 10-inch f/6 tube assembly with Pierre
optics for some time. He placed an ad on Astromart looking for a Bigfoot
mount, and to his shock, found one. It arrived from Philadelphia in
excellent condition. As a tribute to Pierre, he copied his brilliant
cradle design as best as he could. For under $1000, he has the most
stable, portable equatorial mount for Newtonians available, complete with a
Mathis gear. I'm still disappointed with giving up my Bigfoot, but it went
to a good home, as Jack Jones uses it more frequently than I did.
The seeing really settled down nicely, and Steve Coe's 11" SCT provided a
view of Saturn that, honestly, I didn't think an SCT was capable of giving.
Most impressive at 400x was the cloud band detail on the globe of the
planet. Despite being seeing-limited, I didn't, and haven't to this day
seen the Encke Division in the A ring. Across the field, Dwight Bogan's
6-inch refractor was cranked up to a similar magnification. While the view
was refractor quality (as close to perfect as possible), I found what I
always find: the detail on the planet was muted compared to the larger
aperture. As Steve told me (the owner of five telescopes), "there is no
one perfect telescope."
Finally, it was nice to see that binoviewer fever has not yet struck SAC.
All of the views were as bright as they could be for their aperture. While
I absolutely love binoviewers for planets, none of the deep-sky views of
the planets were compromised by splitting the light into two beams.
Tom
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