Sunday, October 13, 2013

Quick Update

So the new 150/750 Newton makes quite wonderful images of the Moon – seeing was clearly the limiting factor. I started looking while there was still blue sky and the red filter was quite helpful.

Should make a comparison of the 150/750 with the 114/500 Newton (actually 100/450 Newton), with respect to seeing and such – but not tonight. Some of my eyepieces were keeping fogging over – I need an eyepiece heater! :-) So I stopped.

I bought two low-magnification eyepieces: a PL30mm and a PL40mm eyepiece from Orbinar. They are quite OK (considering the price) but suffer from some kidney-beaning (especially the 40mm) and don't have a eye-cup. Furthermore I bought from Orbinar a PL15mm. Now I have Plössls (or Super-Plössls) in all sizes I need: 40mm, 30mm, 25mm, 20mm, 15mm, 12.5mm, 10mm and 6.5mm. Next up some wide-angle planetary eyepieces – but that has to wait for now.

With my fast scopes the PL6.5mm is distinctly better than the SR6mm and K4mm I have – the later two suffer from visible chromatic aberration in my fast scopes. I wanted to do more tests tonight on the Moon, but alas, the eyepieces kept fogging over.

I tried to get a look at the Pleiades from inside (with the 70/300 refractor and my new PL30mm and PL40mm) – but there might have been some haze and the Moon washed out everything. I have seen the main stars of the Pleiades (doh!), but tonight not the "tail" (TYC 1800-1567-1, HD23632, HD23609, TYC 1800-1630-1 and TYC 1800-1729-1) – which for me was very nice the first time I saw the Pleiades.

And now my muscles hurt…

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