Thanks to Dave for organising yet another fruitful sidewalk session and all the rest for their support and participation. Crowd was definitely bigger compared to weekdays and lots of oh-my-gods were heard throughout the session.
Dave, regarding the queue building up while setting up your telescope, now you have a taste of the "pressure" James and Alfred felt when they were setting up their goto big scopes at Toa Payoh at an open area with high human traffic.
Last night there was this adorable kid who was following right behind me very very closely while I was setting up my scope so that he can the first person to take a look through it at Saturn. Just a little concern I might accidentally bump him off the edge of the stepped sloped. Fortunately, Dave was showing stuff on his ipad and I told the boy to go to Uncle Dave first as he is showing something very interesting.
As for my "poisons", they are the cheap pharmaceutical kind you can buy from neighbourhood shops. Nothing compared to the specialist by-prescription only "poison" you may be exposed by others in the future.
No squirrels spotted last night but glad Jessie and spouse made an effort to come down and was rewarded with a good opportunity to gain experiential knowledge by side by side comparisons of the pros and cons between 2 refractors and a maksutov.
It was nice to finally meet Hazrie and take a look at and through his 60mm scope (not 50mm as previously speculated) which uses a 0.965" diagonal and eyepieces:
Meade Polaris 60mm AZ with a 3x barlow:
The focuser is surprising smooth. In today's age where newcomers can afford beginner scope of 5 inches and above, it may be hard to imagine how much lunar detail a 60mm can show *for its price*.
This is a shot of the Moon through it:
(1) Shot using camera phone with poor low light capability.
(2) Both hands holding phone were shaking slightly when shot was taken.
(3) Shot through a budget 0.965" eyepiece.
(4) There was still a slight haze in the sky.
(5) Photo as it is. Cropped and resized only. No photo enhancing techniques employed.
Considering all of the above factors, one can imagine how much better Moon looked through the eyepiece and for someone who have not seen the Moon close up before, this scope is already capable of attracting a few "wows" as it did before as well as last night.
