New toys first light

[Kolchak357]

I went on a spending spree lately. Probably not the wisest of financial decisions, but I'm loving my new purchases and my wife hasn't filed for divorce yet (so I think I'm in the clear). Thought I'd pop in and share my brief experience with the new gear.

The first purchase was a power-switch/filter-switch system from EarthWin optics. I searched for a used one, but couldn't find one in the configuration I wanted. Eventually I just contacted EarthWin and they made one just the way I wanted. The switch system is integrated into a two inch diagonal and gives me magnification options of; standard mag, 1.8x Barlow, and a .68 focal reducer setting. It also allows for two filter options. All settings are accessed via slide switches underneath the unit.

Purchase number two is a 22mm Nagler T4 eyepiece. After ordering the power-switch, I wanted to find a wide angle eyepiece that gave me three very useful magnifications. I was lucky enough to find a used one for sale in very nice condition. My first TV eyepiece and also my first 82 degree eyepiece.

Last night was the first clear night since the eyepiece showed up. I loaded in the 22mm eyepiece as well as my two favorite filters (Baader Moon & Skyglow, and DGM NPB) before I took the scope outside. I got setup a little late and didn't give the scope proper time to come to temperature, but I forged ahead anyway.

First target after aligning was the Orion Nebula. I started with the reducer setting. With the 22mm eyepiece it gives me approximately 60x mag and just about maxes out my fov. I see why people love these why angle eyepieces. They frame larger targets so nicely. I then slid in the NPB filter and nebulosity became much more defined and larger. Beautiful as Orion proudly can be on a clear moonless night.
I then shifted my focus over to the eastern part of my sky to see if I could spot some of the Messier galaxies since the moon wasn't crashing the party. I found the standard setting of approximately 93x magnification most useful on these targets. One or two also looked good barlowed at about 165x. I'll spare you the details but I had quite a bit of luck spotting some galaxies I hadn't caught before. At least 5 or 6 new ones for me.
Since I was in the area I slewed over to globular cluster M3. Fairly bright with a small amount of stars identifiable at 93x, but M3 became a wow moment when barlowed to 165x. So many more individual stars visable. Could not take my eye off it. Even forced my wife to come outside for a look. Thought about lifting my dog to the eyepiece as I wanted everyone to have a look. Buck declined as he doesn't like to go out on the deck when it gets cold out.
Last target of the night was Jupiter. Used the Barlow setting and Baader Moon & Skyglow filter on this one. A lovely look to be sure, but I probably could have used even a little more magnification as the sky seemed like it could handle it. But it was getting late and my wife had to be up at 5AM this morning, so I called it a night.

Conclusions
Absolutely love everything about the EarthWin setup. Three mags and two filters available without ever having to move your eye from the eyepiece. You do have to refocus each time you change magnifications, but that is me nitpicking. I had a wonderful night with just one eyepiece. No fumbling around in the dark changing eyepieces or screwing filters on and off. I know it's not difficult changing eyepieces or filters and most of you can probably do it blindfolded, but this kind of setup is such a lovely convenience. It's a pricey luxury purchase, but it felt well worth the money when using it. You could probably do 99% of your observing by owning just a couple of eyepieces. With two eyepieces you would have 6 magnifications available to you.
The 22mm Nagler T4 lives up to the hype. It's sort of like a classic Cadillac; big, heavy, but comfortable and easy on the eyes. All 82 degrees are easy to see with that big eye lens. Plenty of eye relief for comfortable viewing. In my SCT the stars were lovely and contrast seemed very good to me. Eye placement is a little more critical when barlowed, but not what I would call tricky or difficult. I felt no eye strain in the two and a half hours I was outside. A very comfortable and engaging eyepiece to use. I've heard people complain about eye guard setting mechanism, but it worked perfectly for me with no issue. Can already tell this will be my most used eyepiece. Will probably only get a rest on the moon, planets, or other high mag targets. Not sure I could justify the price of a new one, but the preowned price made this a purchase I could feel very good about.

[Kolchak357]

Sorry forgot the pictures.

image.jpeg

image.jpeg

Why are my pictures always upside down? Can someone tell me how to fix this?

Here we are:
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01.jpg

Best,

JG

[utd1]

Thanks for sharing your first light report, Eric and congrats on the new gear!

Thanks for posting.

[omeek]

Nice new toys! Congrats!

The picture orientation issue has to do with the EXIF data of your image (Exchangeable image file format). The biggest issue is that different programs and apps will sometimes use the EXIF data and other times seems to just randomly pic an offset orientation. For example, if I click on your image and open it in a new browser window, the image is in the correct orientation. When I open your image in an editor, the actual image is sideways like you see in your post.

Digital cameras and phones have an auto-rotate feature that adjusts due to the camera's orientation. The catch is that this is usually a 'virtual rotation'. It basically sets a flag to indicate to the software, app or the digital cameras LCD screen which way to rotate the image instead of actually rotating the image itself.

It could be the case that the forum is disregarding this orientation flag (since it works viewing the image itself in the browser, the forum software is the likely culprit). To see what I mean, click on your image so the forum opens it up. It will be sideways. Now, click on the image again so it opens in a new browser window. The image will be in the correct orientation.

There is a lot of info stored in the EXIF data. From your image, I can see the GPS Coordinates from where you took the picture along with pretty much every aspect of the picture (Camera make/model, resolution, etc..). It even has data telling if a flash was used for the image capture or not!

I guess that was the long-winded way of saying, you'd probably have to edit the image before posting so it is in the correct orientation. The problem with this though is that your image iteself will be sideways but, would show up correct in the forum. I wouldn't bother doing that though. Just bug the MODs to see if there might be a patch for the version of vBulletin they are using.

[Bigzmey]

Oh, so you are not observing laying on the back? Gratz on the new toys! After I got my first 82 degree EP, I felt claustrophobic every time I used plossl.

[omeek]

Quick update on my previous novel, I did some digging and found that vBulletin officially does not utilize EXIF orientation data so, that's the problem. We'll just have to live with clicking the image twice to get a correct view. It is a little surprising since most other forum software does (phpBB2, myBB, etc..) but, not a huge deal.

[Xenomorph]

Thanks for the report! and congrats on the new toys!!

[Gabby76]

Always nice to have gear that works exactly the way you want, congratulations on the new purchase.

[bladekeeper]

Congrats on the new gear Eric! Awesome stuff! The Nagler sounds like a joy to use also!

Yeah, the pics can be troublesome. I get the same thing with my phone pics.

My solution is, after moving these to my PC, is to right click on them, choose EDIT, and this opens the image in Paint. I just click the SAVE button and it's all good and easy peasy. Reckon that falls in line with what Oliver said. Well done Oliver!

Congrats again Eric!

[starlogborg]

Thanks for that great report, Eric! I had never heard about EarthWin before, but now I want one.