Hello!

@Orion25 it was not too bad, it's a matter of keeping concentration i think. The hardest part was the position of the eyepiece on the equatorial mount, my back had to be in odd position in order to bend down to the EP while sketching, perhaps that's the hardest part of all.

But it was fun to do, it's always fun to finish a sketch. I think i found a female model to sketch today, I hope she will be up to it. Funny thing she had a cross eye and she god a special operation to correct it. doctor did an incredible job. The momentum is there for me to capture her face by sketch.

@Dave In Vermont thanks for your support too with this, i try to be good and to get better.. when I look trough the eyepiece, at some point I have a urge to produce something out of the views, i can't just look, pack and go to sleep.

These efforts will keep me happy for a few days in a row. Or if not happy, it's creating an internal thought hideaway in my mind an going there it much much easier for me the restore my happiness, like some kind of battery.

I did this sketch of the mountains I also published on SGL previously. It was a fun sketch of these mounts, moon is incredible these days.



Now i am waiting to see if i go outside, it's totally clear but i back from shoveling wet clay and snow.. And i am also tired mentally from the job.... I am not sure yet..

 

Thanks Ruud, it was hard to make to, I had slight back pain because of the eyepiece position and the ground itself was unequal around the tripod of the telescope.

Anyway that sketch it's a very strong memory of that observation, the moment and a very impressive sky.

 

2018-03-17 - OBSERVATION REPORT - PART 2 - GEMINI

Yeah I went out last night after 2 weeks.

This was a very welcomed event! Great sky good transparency, average seeing, first part of the observation was Taurus that part of report is on SGL. The second part was Gemini, much shorter but still very interesting, the AC part.



I looked mainly at "u" Propus "1" and "v". Has you can see on the map I have a tag "WOW blue" close to "v" that's because it's one of the bluest start I have ever looked at, it's visually very hot! beautiful target.

Then the M35 MASSIVE cluster is so incredible, this one has to be one of my favorite especially at low power, 29x wide fields, it's at least 1.5 degree in diameter. Ahhhh I tried a 18mm EP on it too but the views were less impressive, still beautiful but not has unique has 29x 2degrees TFOV 68d AFOV

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Just before that, there was an attempt to split Gem Propus with my Newtonian... and, HELL! there is nothing to do, the telescope can't split anything with a very bright part bellow 3 seconds (those were 3.2 vs 6.2 mag) there is too much coma for it to be possible, the coma coming out of the bright star will hide the faint companion.

I tried to help myself with 2 Wratten colors.

80a blue and and 56 Light green... Well the 80a had an good cutting effect on the yellow star but it was ineffective overall same thing with the Light green.

The blue one had a better effect on dimming the right frequency of light then the green one.. it must depend of the color of the star, that one was fairly yellow.

I think it's the telescope's fault more then the filters.. 1.7 seconds for an unequal pair is a hard one.

I tried 200x with ES.47mm but the scintillation was killing the view.. The Orthoscopic 7mm was a better performer but still affected by scintillation.

Could not see the split at the end.

But the tests were fun and the whole observation too!

 

Reggie yeah you have better instruments then me to split Propus, tell me if you have success with that. The filters will help my condition in some case I think, it's a work in progress.

The sky is fabulous tonight, not a single cloud during the entire day it's one of these really rare night but very cold, it will go down to -17.. in March.

Thanks for the date, i changed it and thanks for looking at the Astronomy Den also!

@Mak the Night, these mountains are just under Archimedes, they form a triangle with Archimedes, Aristillus and these Mt. Spitzbergen

 

Thanks @Mak the Night

The mountains are almost there in your picture, Mt. Spitzbergen is a nice place.

 

Some mountains are uninteresting when they are out of the terminator region. I did my sketch and they were kms out of the terminator, in direct light exposition. But they were nice.

That's one feature I found interesting with the #38a Dark Blue filter during full moon, it will pull out many features out of many objects in direct exposition with the sun.

That's just my observation.. but these mountains were interesting without the 38a AND directly exposed. They are a great target.

I wish you get better conditions @Mak the Night, this week looks promising for me.

 

@Orion25 They look like usual mountains but almost everything is worth time at the eyepiece. It's a nice little sector I hope you can try it someday.

The sky is clear for me, I need to do it, get the telescope out and catch some DSOs! Yesss

But before that i transfered 250gb of data out of my portable drive and I am going to format it right now.

 

Ahh i love mine too, they are Western Digitals quite stable too. I bought one for 69CAD taxes in lase week very good deal. I have 2x 1 TB now to have double the backup.

My older model is maybe 3 years now and lost some transfer speed lately. After the formatting, don't know if it's because of that, got back it's original speed around 106MB and 114 MB per seconds. Lately it was running at 90. 80, even 65 MB per seconds.

Inexpensive, intelligent, reliable, fast.. wow .

 

Hello Reggie nice you tried Propus.

Wwell if a Maksutov can split it, I deduce it's an hard one. Glad you could have a look at the 2 stars from my report especially V. I try to remember these individual vivid stars.

Most stars are white but the true blue ones where i can really perceive the blue, they are rare, not has much has a deep red carbon star bur I would say close.

A true blue star like V (((; YESS!

 

2018-03-25 - REPORT - A very good moon session

Wow what a great moon observation, I had my greatest views of all time with my 8" Newtonian, it's well collimated and the optics are sparkling clean, I am so impressed. This was a daylight observation from 18:15 to 19:50 and the moon was a nothing less then 60 degrees high,65% illuminated with top seeing and transparency conditions. A superb sky.

At each eyepieces I was more impressed, 18mm, 9mm, 12mm with barlow, 7mm, 4.7mm all of them were giving impressive results at a given power for different specific things.

The very best views were from the center of my 7mm Orthoscopic or my 4.7mm ES. The Orthoscopic is not focued on all the FOV, I noticed the last 25% edge is not totally sharp, but for the rest, it's cutting like a laser. It has a very cold color, the moon was more white bluish, the ES 4.7 is much warmer, naturally it has more yellow.

Overall I prefer the warmer color and in the middle of the ES 4.7. For 69 more x of power, it has equal sharpness has the Orthoscopic... the ES is a much better eyepiece in my advice considering the 82d AFOV and comfort.

I am repeating myself with this, sorry. I just love that ES so much.

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OBSERVATION:
I tried many filters many of there were counterproductive.

18mm (Exit pupil 3.6) + 23a Light Red : Enhancement of the dark shades around terminator but too aggressive even with that much exit pupil.
18mm + 25 Red: Similar effect around the terminator perhaps better then 23a for unknown reasons but too aggressive again.
18mm + 21 Orange: Now we are talking, I can see many more details and it's during the daylight.
NOTE: I can see more floaters during the day. I guess Red 25 and 23a are pretty useless filters, i hope they will get more love someday.
9mm (Exit pupil 1.8) + 21 Orange: Filter is too dark for that exit pupil.
9mm No filters, the view is so crisp at 111x the telescope can handle that power like nothing with an incredible amount of details. Overall for general views the quality of the XcelLX 9mm is better then the Starguider 12mm. Less distortion.
9mm + 12 Yellow: Much better then Orange filter for that specific exit pupil but not exactly optimal, I moved to something else quickly. Actually I preferred the views from the 9mm without any filters.
12mm + barlow 2x: Extreme comfort to look at the mountains of the moon but somewhat The Starguider is limited in term of maximum sharpness and crispiness at the center. It's very very good but not has good has the Orthoscopic or the ES 4.7. I had good views of the sector of the crater Cassini , Mare Imbrium. I stayed with the duo for some time perhaps 20 minutes, very good duo.
NOTE: I see no flotaters with 12mm +barlow and almost nothing with the 7mm but the 4,7mm will reveal much more, it,s a downside of that EP.
NOTE: Now the gear has really cooled down, time to put back the ES 4.7 and the OR-HD 7mm Both were showing me extreme details in the terminator.. In reality, these eyepieces are on the edge of details without any color filters, filter will reduce the overall quality a slight bit, but enough for me to remove it.
ES4.7mm + 82a: At some time this was a good duo but I removed the filter after a few minutes only and did the rest of the observation at 212x.
NOTE: The views were steady pure around the big craters around Nectaris. I tried onece 286x and 424x both were not giving me significant satisfaction but I had interesting views at 424x (there was a good timing looking at a very large crater in the terminator)

I did not identify any specific objects today it was an improvisation, i wanted to look more and write less. I saw some very very interesting things on the surface of this very mysterious orb.

Wow that's was a GOOD observation, I did no sketch but took my time to fix a specific point especially with my 7mm and 4,7mm until I get a super super sharp visual, then tweaking the precise dual speed focuser to be able to see the finest details available, details within details. Almost invisible small craters, these are the best targets to locate.

This was one of my very best moon observation to this date, I am amazed! with no job tomorrow, I would still be there attempting a sketch.

Hopefully this big text was not too boring for you, with no sketch to look at this time.