[AZ-Observing] Flatiron last night

Howdy all;

Well, last night at Flatiron was the first night out with my brand new Nexstar 
11 GPS scope from Celestron.  Overall, I was happy with the performance of the 
scope.  The optical performance is excellent, as good as any Schmidt-Cassegrain 
that I have ever observed with.  I saw lots of detail on Jupiter at 200X with a 
light blue filter.  The Eskimo Nebula in Gemini also showed off some internal 
detail at high power.  At the other end of the magnification scale, using the 
35mm Panoptic to get 80X gives an excellent view of the Orion Nebula and M 35 
and M 37 open clusters in the Winter Milky Way.

SAC President Dave Fredericksen also purchased the same scope and we had lots 
of fun going to the same objects and changing eyepieces and filters.  
Obviously, my new telescope provides MUCH better views than Dave's "month old" 
C-11.  But, don't tell him that.

On the negative side, I need to get better trained about how to use the 
telescope, but that is true of any new instrument.  I apologize to anyone who 
got the cold shoulder, if they walked up to chat with me while I was punching 
buttons and mumbling to myself.  The scope would GOTO objects and put them at 
the edge of the field of view.  It got better as the evening progressed and I 
did a re-align on a star close to the objects I was trying to view.  That seems 
to be a trick I will use often.  The scope also has a "jump" or "click" motion 
that means it does not track consistently.  This is particularly irritating at 
high power, the scope suddenly jumps about 20 arc seconds.  I believe that may 
be a balance problem and I need to address that.

We had 20 vehicles at Flatiron and lots of folks and scopes, it was a very fun 
evening overall.

Thanks to all who showed up;
Steve Coe


stevecoe@xxxxxxxxx
Author:  Deep Sky Observing--The Astronomical Tourist
Saguaro Astronomy Club web site:
www.saguaroastro.org

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