I started observing around 03:00 BST and conditions and transparency were above average. M45 looked good at 30x and 60x.



After breaking down the equipment and moving the mount and tripod several metres to the south I got a much better view of the rising Moon.



This is the first time I’ve moved the mount and telescope so far since I was discharged from the hospital. It’s not an easy thing to move an equatorial mount and tripod complete with counterweight when you’re partially paralysed. It was worth the pain and effort though.



Moon was at Waning Crescent, 28.6% illumination, azimuth 270.2° E, altitude 22.8°, 375, 684 km distant (Orion). Highlights included the Sea of Moisture, Gassendi, Bay of Rainbows, Plato, Philolaus, Kepler, Longomontanus and especially the Vallis Schroteri which was very crisp, detailed and clear at all magnifications utilised.



I moved the mount north a couple of metres and viewed M42 at approximately 04:30 at azimuth 119° 08‘ SE and altitude 14° 23‘. By this time the RACI had dewed but once I had the three stars of Orion’s Belt in the finder it was pretty simple to find M42.



Neither the primary or secondary telescope mirrors had dewed. At 100x I could easily see the Trapezium and the nebula itself looked good with a UHC filter for a 4.3mm exit pupil (30x).



Telescope was a 130mm Sky-Watcher 130M with an added Baader helical focuser. Eyepieces used were 5 & 9mm Sky-Watcher UWA’s, a 6mm Astro Hutech orthoscopic, a 30mm Vixen NPL and a 2x TeleVue Barlow. Filters were a Baader Neodymium and a Baader UHC-S. Magnifications achieved ranged from 30x, 60x, 100x, 150x, 180x, 200x and 300x. Pictures from CDC, VMA, Celestron SkyPortal and Wikipedia.

 

Looks very nice indeed, MTN!

'Better than usual seeing,' eh? It appears the Sky-Gods are smiling on you over and across the pond. Socked-in up here in Podunk, unfortunately. Looking foreward to seeing the Pleiades myself. I love this time of year - start my tour around & about the Summer Triangle (Deneb, Altair, and Vega), end on a long note of the Seven Sisters!

Life is good -

Dave

 

The overall seeing seemed good considering what it's been the past couple of years. I could see the Milky Way and later Cassiopeia was virtually directly overhead. It's frustrating to look up at the Summer Triangle and a veritable sea of stars and not be able to look at them with the telescope. Still, the Big Cat's time is getting closer every day. I originally bought the Skymax to look at the zenith more easily. A 102mm Mak just doesn't cut it for anything but the easier MO's though. It's too slow really and just doesn't have the FOV of an equivalent 102mm refractor like Ray's. It is good for lunar/planetary, but now I've made enough progress in physiotherapy I can use the Bazooka for that, plus the dreaded 'Dew Event Horizon' is much more delayed with a Newtonian.

 

Firefox has done it real good! Now it won't let me run java-scripts unless I click on it in my 'Preferences' option. Guess what? THERE IS NO 'PREFERENCES' option!

I've had enough. One big bug after another in this stupid version from Mozilla!

'til later -

Dave

 

I checked this out a few years back. It is a viable alternative to Fx.

http://www.palemoon.org/

 

Thank you, MTN. I'll take a look at it in a few. First I need to take my Rubber Hip-Waders off and wash all the dead, squashed bugs off of them. YUCK! That thing bundled 44 pieces of malware in with it!

<grumble, grumble, grumble...>

Dave

 

The Palemoon installer bundled malware? Are you sure those weren't false positives?

https://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/www.palemoon.org

https://www.virustotal.com/en/url/0...02b69787578cb77bf4dfc374/analysis/1472356196/

 

No, no, MTN - the Mozilla FuzzBrains(Firefox) did that!

I wish they'd stop treating their browser as their own personal hobby. Some people stand a great deal to lose when their systems get run over by viral trojans and other goodies they inadvertently installed as a "New & Improved!" version on their browser-software. No wonder they're always 'alerting' us to a 'security-improvement.'

<...he says, scraping another carapace off his boots...>

Dave

 

Something is definitely amiss on Planet Mozilla. Weather's turned to pants here. I so want to play with my new toys, I mean my Sky-Watcher UWA's!

 

Wait three whole days! Wow, that's willpower lol. The 4mm looks so good ... it's under 40 quid ... it would give me 225x on the Bazooka ... must fight the temptation to buy one ...


... It should come in 3 to 5 days!

 

Speaking of Firefox, I've just done a 'refresh' then re-synched it. Apart from having to re-customise PrefBar, everything's back to normal (theme, bookmarks, extensions etc). No crashy-freezy not responding borkification at the moment. Touch wood. Seems very fast and snappy.



The Pocket List thingy is new though. It might explain Fx's erratic behaviour. Mozilla are struggling to finance Fx and keep including pointless thingies into the architecture or GUI.

 

I must thank you- MTN - for the link to Pale Moon! I have it up & running and it's every bit just like Firefox used to be - before Mozilla wrecked it with their idiotic upgrade. It is now my preferred browser. I banished Mozilla to Valhalla - once and for all.

Thunderheads are rolling in from the West here. They sure are nice to watch, but puts stargazing on hold for the duration. I've been enjoying the nice and clear nights the last few. I bought the 11mm & 16mm 80° beasties from here:

http://www.universityoptics.com/125inch.html#80

And they are my new favorites! Been running them in my Maksutov and my diminutive ST80. With the additions of Crayford 10:1 dual-focusers, they've been giving me nice & wide scalpel-sharp views. I'm quite pleased with 'em. And the price was certainly agreeable.

Off for some cloud-gazing -

Dave

 

You're welcome Dave. Pale Moon has quite a following now I believe. Some pretty good themes from what I can see. They've even forked Gecko. The freeware version of MBAE automatically includes it in its shield. I remember those UO Optics 80° EP's. They're also Barsta.

http://www.barsta.com/show_hdr.php?xname=MDA8V11&dname=OPFOR71&xpos=9

 

Good to know. Can't recall seeing Barsta about here in the Untied Snakes. I think I'll poke around a little.....

Dave

 

AFAIK Barsta are a Taiwanese OEM who have at least one factory on the Chinese mainland. Their products are usually distributed by other companies under a plethora of different names. TS Optics (Germany) and often as Olivon in the States. They're also badged as BST which is probably a contraction or acronym of Barsta. I think Sky-Watcher market other products of theirs, principally a 3x Barlow. I also believe they have some connection with Hichina Zhicheng Technology ltd. Teleskop-Express market a few Barsta eyepieces under the TS Optics badge. I haven't seen any of those particular UO/Barsta eyepieces this side of the pond under any badge though. From my experience Barsta products are reasonably priced and quite good quality. The 2x Barsta (Omegon) shorty Barlow I have is like looking through a TeleVue.

 

When I get the 4mm I'll have four altogether as I already have the 9mm, 7mm and 5mm.



For the past couple of years or so any eyepieces I bought were for the 102mm Mak, the 90m Mak or that could also be used for the Big Cat. Some were bought deliberately for the BC. It's only the past couple of months that I've realised that I can now use the Bazooka again. Unfortunately I'm a bit limited with it and it's really only easy to use for things in or near the plane of the ecliptic. However, by strategically leaving the tripod/mount outside (covered from the elements when not in use) it makes using the Bazooka as a kind of opportunistic grab'n'go scope a real prospect. All I need is a small sports bag or holdall for a very few accessories. The Big Cat is always going to be a bit of a magnum opus to set up. It'll be worth it and I've got a couple of small eyepiece cases to take out with it. The first is an Orion case and also contains adaptors and filters.

Orion Case

40mm TeleVue Plossl
35mm Baader Eudiascopic
20mm TeleVue Plossl
18mm Astro Hutech orthoscopic
16mm TeleVue Nagler T5
TeleVue 2x Barlow
Omegon 2x Barlow (short apochromatic)
Celestron 2x Barlow (customised ~ GSO housing, Synta removable element)

The second is a modified (by the judicious use of a Swiss Army Knife lol) Celestron Eyeopener Kit case.

Celestron Eyeopener Case

32mm TeleVue Plossl
25mm TeleVue Plossl
24mm TeleVue Panoptic
19mm TeleVue Panoptic
18.2mm TeleVue DeLite
10mm TeleVue Delos

These two cases carry just about everything I could need for a Big Cat session. I also have a small modified Celestron AstroMaster Kit case which can go out with more or less any telescope.

Celestron AstroMaster Case

15mm Antares Plossl M.C.
11mm TeleVue Plossl
10mm Baader Eudiascopic
8mm TeleVue Plossl
7mm Fujiyama orthoscopic
6mm Baader BCO

I have a loose pick'n'mix selection to tailor eyepieces for a particular session (mainly in bolt cases).

Misc (Bolt Case & other)

40mm Celestron Plossl (GSO)
32mm Celestron Plossl (GSO)
30mm Vixen NPL
25mm Vixen NPL
25mm Sky-Watcher MA (reversed Kellner) x3
15mm Celestron Kellner
14mm Baader Morpheus
9mm Celestron X-Cel LX
9mm Sky-Watcher UWA (Barsta)
7mm Sky-Watcher UWA (Barsta)
6mm Astro Hutech orthoscopic
5mm Sky-Watcher UWA (Barsta)
4mm Sky-Watcher UWA (Barsta) pending
Celestron X-Cel 2x Barlow
TeleVue 2x Barlow
TS Optics 2.5x Barlow
TeleVue 2.5x Powermate
TeleVue 3x Barlow

Then, there is the bino case, only used with the 102mm Skymax and the BC.

Bino Case (x2 ~)

32mm Baader BCO
25mm Astro Hutech orthoscopic
18mm Baader BCO
15mm TeleVue Plossl
13mm Celestron Plossl (GSO, customised draw tube)
2x & 1.6x WO Barlow GPC/nosepieces
2.6x TS Optics Barlow GPC/nosepiece

Not to mention the 90mm Omegon MightyMak grab'n'go bag.

Omegon grab’n’go OTA Bag

19mm TeleVue Panoptic
17mm Celestron Plossl
15mm Celestron Omni Plossl
12mm Celestron Omni Plossl
Celestron Omni 2x Barlow (customised ~ GSO housing, Synta removable element)



I may try to see a twilight Saturn tonight, all I'll probably take out with the Bazooka OTA will be the 7mm and 5mm SW UWA's and a 19mm Panoptic.

 

Yeah, I didn't mention all the borked stuff in pieces lol. If I get to see Saturn for a bit I'll have a look at the rich starfield/clusters in the south. I've worked out I can get a 5.8mm exit pupil with a 40mm eyepiece on the Bazooka, for 22.5x. That's the lowest useful Bazooka mag more or less. Barsta/TS Optics do a 70° 21mm wide angle 'Expanse' EP which would give me a 3.1mm exit pupil for 41x. It looks sorta tempting lol.