Brief report:
- Glad we took our chances on Good Friday despite the bad weather earlier in the evening. Set up the telescopes around 10pm+.
- One refractor, one tak mewlon and three dobs were setup.
- The patch of sky where Saturn and Moon were located gets clearer and clearer as the night progresses. Again, thanks to clear-sky lucky charm James being present.
- Happy to finally meet Mane and his dob and to see Depardeuz and his dob meet Mane's too!
- One of the highlights for me is to see Depardeuz answering Mane's questions like a veteran and dumping lots of advice and tips at him. Time really flies. I remember doing the same to Depardeuz in the past. Very heart-warming scene.
- Thanks to Depardeuz, Dave and Ava taking good care of Mane, I can focus my energies on "challenging" James and his Tak!
- Thanks to Clifford for bringing a couple of grenades to try out on the dob and figuring out how to make my Baader 24mm focus in it.
- Took a nice photo of a couple standing besides the dob with the Moon high up in the sky in the background. Was sitting on the ground and positioning their phone a few millimeters off the ground. The shot turned out great. The joy of seeing them wow-ing at the photo was greater!
- Nice small crowds turn out every now and then. So we were able to spend more time explaining more astro stuff to them and help them take more photos of Moon through our scopes.
- Shortly after midnight, sky was totally clouded. Only James, Depardeuz and myself were around by then. Decided to pack up soon. Since we were thirsty and hungry, bought some fast food and ate them near the stone benches. Carried the dob into the sheltered tentage just in case it starts to pour. The Tak remained at where it was with its cover on.
- While enjoying our food under the clouds, we had a nice astro chat.
- After we finish our food at around 1am+, took a look at the sky..... CLEAR!!!!!! Saturn and Moon shinning brightly near zenith!
- The tracking of James setup was so accurate that Saturn was still dead in the center of the eyepiece!
- Shifted the dob back out of the tentage. Realised it wasn't properly collimated earlier as we were too anxious to take the first looks at Saturn through it in case the weather turns bad suddenly.
- Took my time to do a better collimation this time and then we were all set for a proper shootout between the two 10-incher!
- We matched the magnification at about 300x and compared the views.
- All 3 of us concluded the dob gave a much better view! Sharper, more contrast, brighter moons, wider view! The Tak gave a warmer and fuzzier view. I personally prefer the "creamy" look in the dob. (Tak owners please continue reading ...
)
- After Depardeuz left, I continued to observe Saturn and Moon while James continued to test the GOTO accuracy of the mount and looked at a few star clusters. After a while, we realised the Tak collimation was quite off after looking at some stars followed by some star testing!
- We were too tired by then to do a proper collimation on the Tak. The lack of chairs and suitable stars at a comfortable altitude is not helping the situation. So we decided to call it a day, packed up and left at around 5am+.
- So the stage is set for a future round two of 10" dob vs properly collimated 10" Tak Mewlon! Hope I can improve on the secondary mirror alignment and mark the center of the primary mirror of the dob more accurately by then.
- In conclusion, our first looks at the Saturn through this dob and the tak was totally worth staying up late. A good Friday (and Saturday) for us indeed.
Some pics:
Moon through the dob. Handheld handphone shot. Cropped and resized.
