My collection (and not a single new item!)
I finally have my eyepieces and accessories together! So out went the scope during another night of relatively good seeing. From my spot, I again have large light domes (on a background of nice, orangy skies) from the east and North, leaving a 45deg relatively dark window towards the NE.
This time I had another idea on how to setup and roughly polar align: The SXW mount requires me to point the scope to the West as its “home” position. So I shot 270deg which landed me on a small door on a nearby LRT station. Centered the scope on the door by shifting the tripod manually and I was good to go!
Since Jupiter was high in the sky tonight and clearly the brightest, the obvious 1st target was Jupiter. GOTO on the starbook was again impressive, placing Jupiter within the FOV of my 9mm Nagler without any fine adjustments. Now Jupiter looked like a tiny pea but the equatorial band was clearly visible. Centered in the FOV, then proceeded to barlow 2.5x to 3.6mm equivalent (which gave a mag of about 140x) Image remained nice and sharp and some curly lines were seen. Unfortunately the picture could not hold as the focuser was unable to deal with the weight of the Barlow and Eyepeice! (This has since been rectified: The tension adjustment screw was missing and Celestron, in its collective wisdom, has 3 or 4 different screw types on 1 telescope, this hole being unique) Next time I'll try to note the level of detail visible on Jupiter when I can keep focus for more than a few milliseconds and compare it with the Meade 7mm Or.
On to M31 and a blob of light was seen. Sigh.... I need a bigger scope! (Tachyon, I'm looking for you! Answer your msg leh.... unless you're trekking in the wilds again:) )
By this time Orion was rising very nicely so a quick slew over to M42, the Orion nebula was definitely in order. Here the Nagler really proved its worth. Whereas in the 17mm generic Plossl the nebula could only be seen with averted vision, in the Nagler it was obvious to direct vision. The dark finger pointing to 4 trapezium stars could be well visualised and got only better with averted vision. The nebula was distinctly red too. Without Barlowing the 4th star was winking in and out of visibility but once barlowed it stayed well visible to direct vision even though the picture as a whole was darker.
M42 is a nebula, so out came the nebula filters! The guy who sold me the Nagler 9 also gave me 2 visual filters as freebies, so here goes
The Orion Skyglow filter made the sky and nebula darker but the nebula stood out in somewhat better contrast. However, due to the loss of light now the 4th star of the trapezium was not visible.
The Lumicon Deep Sky made the picture very dark with the nebula still visible but it seemed to have a blurring effect on the stars. Somehow they were no longer pinpoints of light. I'm not sure if that's due to the limited aperture of my scope (3.1”) or if this is the intended effect of the filter itself. The surface seemed to be fine with only 1 scratch and definitely no dew at the time of use. Not pleasant unfortunately. I shall have to try this again with a larger scope.
By now it was 2am on a workday so time to call it a night. A rapid slewing around from the double cluster towards Capella produced no stars with smoke trails.... darn..... can't find Hartley 2. Then again, with no finder and a low power eyepiece having almost the same AFOV as my Nagler 9 (1.7deg vs 1.47), not much luck there. Till next time and the arrival of my Nagler 20mm
Afterword: The Nagler 20T5 arrived a few days after this obs session. Unfortunately the remains of departed Indonesian trees have been haunting our skies since then, so no viewing since!
![[smilie=woa.gif]](./images/smilies/woa.gif "woa")
