Notes from the field. My rants raves and frothing at the mouth about this maddening and frustrating buy lovely hobby

Originally Posted by cbrucker

It's been a while and I need to upload the reports but here is the current list of Messier objects I have nailed since my last report.

Update 6/1/13 Local Star Party
M97 Owl Nebula

Update 6/10/13
M59 Elliptical galaxy in Virgo
M60 Elliptical galaxy in Virgo
M64 Black Eye Galaxy 6/10/13
M104 Sombrero Galaxy 6/10/13

And the total list by Messier number, description, and date.

M2 Globular Cluster 10/13/12

...

I haven't observed for a while now thanks to clouds, work, and other crap so even though the moon was almost full tonight was going to be the night to do so regardless of conditions and even if I had to fire up my multi megawatt orbital weapons death star laser platform located in an undisclosed location somewhere in orbit, set it for wide beam, and burn any clouds right out of the sky passing aircraft be damned.

It was also an excuse to try out the Televue Ethos EP's ...

Tags: celestron 8" edge, ethos, sct, televue

Categories

Visual Observing

So I found out what those extra tubes are for in the 80mm ES APO kit. They are so you can extend the focal extenders. And they thread onto the collar with the thumb screws and locking brass tension ring that you attach the diagonal or camera to. It unscrews and then you put one or both of these on.

You will have to do this each time you use the OTA as it will not fit in the case with them on the tube.

If you are just using this for visual then I would suggest pulling ...

I was out last night after taking the C11 back to Celestron (I live close to their HQ) the previous week because of problems with the optics. I found that after cooling it and dealing with some problems with my finderscope I just did not enjoy looking through it. The views were brighter, I could go deeper, and the things I was looking at were "bigger" (note the quotes) BUT... For the most part I wasn't viewing I was cursing. Cursing that it hadn't cooled, cursing the weight of the CGEM, ...

I am getting more serious about Astrophotography (AP) and was researching a good AP scope to hone my skills on. My budget for the OTA was $1,000 US or under. So this eliminated the high end super scopes like the Tak, AP, Televue, etc. I wanted a fast scope at least f/6.5 and one with a nice wide field. I also wanted one where I wasn't having to piece together a whole farm or extra parts. Lastly I wanted a scope that I could also use as a grab and go and solar observing one. The contenders were the ...

Tags: es 80mm apo

Categories

Visual Observing , Lessons learned, technical and pro tips , Astro Photography