Jul 09
1
Observing Session – 07-01-09-001
Well. I bought a telescope, and figured today would be a great time to start trying to use it. I can honestly say, I’m pretty happy about it.
Lance picked up a little treat for me this week. London Drugs (who knew!) brought in a shipment of Celestron “Firstscope” units. This little dobsonian telescope is just fantastic. For 50$ you get a 300mm dobsonian with a 20mm wide field, and 4mm high magnification eyepieces. First – the caveat. These eyepieces are NOT particularly good. Replacement is definitely in order, and the first order of business. Since they are 1.25″ eyepieces though, almost ANY telescope shop will have good quality replacement Plossl eyepieces.
Using the Edmund scientific 21.5 that Lance passed me alongside his now retired ETX-60 Meade scope, this little telescope kicks some pretty substantial ass for novice observing.
The Moon…
Crater Eratosthenes sat just in daylight on the terminator. For a 58km wide crater, it stuck out like a sore thumb with the coma ridden 4mm Celestron eyepiece, but was still well defined and must look amazing up close. Mare Imbrium and the Appeninus Montes were well defined, and it’s amazing to think of the violent past of our little Moon.
Rupes Recta – that strange little straight line in Mare Nubium alongside Crater Birt was visible, but took some doing. I knew where to look, and could discern it – but a day sooner would have given me enough shadow relief to make it out clearly.
Lastly Crater Newton to Crater Scott outlined the last visible elements at the south pole terminator. As much as I could pick out along the terminator, it was those few elements that stole my attention tonight.
Stars and Deep space:
I bounced about pretty aimlessly when it came to stars. I toured around Cygnus, and found the cluster housing the North American Nebula. Too much light pollution to see any nebulousity I’m afraid, but I know where to look now.
Vega is one bright mother, white blue to my eyes, Arcturus too. I scanned about quite aimlessly, noting close pairs of stars across the sky until I bumped into Cassiopeia which is my ‘pointer’ constellation to the Andromeda galaxy, which I was able to spot once, barely above the light pollution and the ‘never dark’ north sky. Also in the area is the Perseus double cluster, which eluded me.
Planets:
Though I now see in Starry Night that Saturn was visible for a time, I spent my evening waiting for Jupiter to rise in the east. As promised by Lance, it most definitely does NOT look like a star. Yellowy/Orange would best describe the planet in the eyepiece, with two distinct bright spots on one side, and 8ish diameters to the other side another visible point of light.
. . O .
Just align those dots with the centre of the planet, and that was the layout. Io, Ganymede, Jupiter, and a long gap to Callisto (left to right) with Europa and the others impossible to spot.
I think it’s time to pick up a new eyepiece and a finder scope for this thing. What a great little portable scope!
If you’re looking for an ultra compact and capable wide-field scope, that you can dial the power up on, this is a great little unit.