Location: Fullerton, CA
Time: 5:00-5:30UT 12/26/2001 (9:00-9:30 PST 12/25/2001)
Temp: 60's (F) Winds: Calm
Seeing: 3 out 5
LM: The sky was orange, whadya think? About +2 if I was lucky.
Tele: 180mm f/5.6 Teleport Dob
Oculars: 3-6mm Nagler and 16 T5 Nagler
My wife Kim and I were testing a few new goodies Santa brought down the
chimney. We setup outside the condo with the complex's lights shining
everywhere <sigh>. So we were watching the transit of the spot formerly
known as 'Great Red' through the 7" Teleport and the Santa Goodie Nagler
3mm-6mm zoom. From the heart of light polluted Orange County we had a pretty
good view. Kim's never seen Jupiter before and she picked out the low
contrast GRS at 6mm (168x) calling it "A bubble in the upper big belt."
(SEB). Cool! Then she asked, "And what's those 4 bright stars lined up?
Moons?" <g> "And that dark spot over the bottom belt, what's that?" I hadn't
noticed the dark oval in the NEB, but she did. And her eyesight is generally
terrible.
We went on to Saturn where, like most newbies, she gasped and said "No Way!
That's painted on, right?" <g> We picked out Cassini's Division and 4 moons.
We had fun zooming from 168x to 201x (5mm) which is about what conditions
would allow. Then we went on to the Trapezium. Under the "Orange Skies" of
Orange County M42 was a meager fuzz and totally not worth writing about, but
I picked out all six components of the Trapezium in moments of steady seeing
at 201x. Here my experience pulled away as Kim could not see the E and F
components, yet I knew E was easy and if one knew where to look, F was
there.
All in all we had a nice 30 minutes or with the new 16mm Nagler Type 5 and
Nagler 3mm-6mm Zoom. The Teleport is an expensive, but amazing box. In 6
minutes I was observing and it cools quickly. My new Starbound chair made
using the diminutive dob a pleasure. The mirror in that sucker just gives
and gives.
Santa also came with an adjustable LED flashlight, Deep Map 600, and Richard
Berry's book on Image Processing.
Clear skies to all.
Jeff
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Dec 26 2001 - 10:50:57 MST