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Gott Observatory – 14 April, 2007 Equipment: CDS: 6” F/6 StarMaster modeled custom dobsonian 25mm Antares Elite Plossl, 7mm UO
ortho, 9mm BO/TMB, 15 & 20mm TV Plossls Conditions: Clear sky, no wind, cool with a lot of dew I arrived late and Tom and Don had just finished looking at M51. “M51?” I said. Duh, the Whirlpool! Fortunately it wasn’t M27, though I felt like one! We began the night talking to Dr. Ron Wilhelm in the observatory. He showed us a nice spectrograph of Betelgeuse and described the characteristics one sees in red giants. Quite nice to start the evening with something edifying. Back outside and the refractors trained onto M3 for a nice presentation. By the time we observed M42 it was on the horizon and not so great. Tom put in a 40mm eyepiece to take in as much of the Hyades as he could. M81/82 looked nice in Tom’s scope. I put the Leo Triplet in the 6” dob with the TV 20mm Plossl. Some interesting things came to light on M104, the Sombrero straddling Corvus & Virgo. My TeleVue 20mm plossl produced a nice, bright image of the galaxy that was very pleasing to the eye. However, in the 15mm TV plossl, you could REALLY see the dustlane. Actual detail was more discernable, even though it dimmed the image. This was an interesting observation, and all the magnification we dare use on this galaxy in the southern skies. The City of Lubbock’s great light dome out at the Gott’s northern locale makes all southern targets somewhat washed out. The star cluster M35 with NGC 2158 sure looked nice in the refractors. Saturn was high and nice, but Don and Tom cursed their refractors at the nigh zenith target. The dob, needless to say, easily moved into place and caught them without a problem. We compared my 7mm UO ortho, Don’s new 7mm UWAN and Tom’s 7mm BO/TMB on Saturn. They all produced excellent images, and I could see no clear advantage to any of them, on-axis performance wise. The extra TFOV these models provides is much better than the UO ortho’s, and this can make a difference on some targets. But if one has a smooth moving dob and the patience to track, the UO’s are still nice eyepieces that can perform with the big boys. And the volcano top 7mm, though tight on eye relief, is still comfortable to observe with due to its ergonomic design. The Beehive, M44, was nice in Tom’s refractor. Don & I picked out the Eskimo, NGC 2392 and the nearby cluster NGC 2420. A nice evening under God’s good heavens.
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