Re: Fiberglass vrs Sonotube (weight) warn.. moderate ramble ahead

Well, I just came back from being up there, and while there's very little
wind down here ( 3 miles south ) the winds up there where blowing my scope
and I just couldn't keep it on jupiter which is bad viewing tonight. I might
set up here to see how it is from down here. Once the cops leave the trailer
park that is.
Saturn was ok, but not great, the cold front moving through is playing hell
with viewing.

The other night I could see the space in the rings and the rings shadow on
the planet. As for Jupiter under normal viewing I see the two main bans, but
I don't use high power, not for sidewalk astronomy, for use up there I keep
a 10mm as my highest power ep, my good hp ones are at home for use down
here.

When there's been no planet and if the big dipper is in the right place, I
show the double set of stars in the handle's bend. I've never realy tryed to
split the doubles a lot of people do, even when I had my 12.5 dob in Hawaii,
most of it's viewing time was done doing a verion of sidewalk astronomy and
going to schools at night with the H.A.S. members to put on small star
partys for them.

When I did go out to the club star party I spent most of the time just
slowly crawing through the field of stars and I still do that at times, just
taking in the awesome sight of all the stars. I've never even cared to take
part in the yearly M.Marathon, just never cared to try it, I'd rather set up
alone on a warm night and cruse through the summer fields of stars.
My Dob I have now is a F8 8inch one, if you look at the bottom of the
Telescope Buyers FAQ, you'll see a photo of my and my Dob before I paited
it. I also own a Stargazer Steve 4.25in F9 Dob and at times I still use it
here at home for short times.

Now take tonight, I had one young boy come up to me, He got to see Saturn,
and he asked me about our 9th planet and how metors might have formed it and
that another boy had told him they had found a 10th planet. I told him that
the far body they had found wasn't a planet, that it is classed as a large
kepper belt object. And that they had found some other ones too.

I have a place I can go to that is for my viewing when I want to do dark
skys. It's outside of town and the hills do a fair job of blocking the light
from Rosamond, Mojave, but the light dome from Lancaster/Palmdale/Los
Angeles just about kills viewing anything to the south unless it's higher
up. In 03 the Mars close up, Mars was just above that light dome, if it had
been maybe 5 degrees lower in the sky, it would have been bad seeing for it.

Setting up in a highly light filled area, I don't try to see a lot, I view
the bright planets and moon. But even at the corner, I can view good images
of the moon and have at times even pushed my scope to it's highest power
with my 4.8 niggler EP. But most of the time I use my 12mm orto for planets
and the moon. For most of the time when it's full or near so I use my meade
24mm for wide views for the people to see.


"Dan Mckenna" <dmckenna@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1yJ2e.34541$AN1.4795@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> It sounds like a fairly bright sky.
>
> How is the image quality ?
>
> Do you ever split doubles and have a feel for the seeing in arc seconds
> ?
>
> or one might be able to guess from:
>
> Contrast in the bands of Jupiter and finer detail or Saturn ring
> gaps..small craters on the moon for example ?
>
> Dan
>


.

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