I haven’t had a chance to be out much for the past two weeks, but a lot has happened. Here are some highlights:
GUESTS: My observatory had four visitors over the past couple of weeks. On Sunday afternoon a 2nd grade girl and her father told me how much they liked the field trip I set up for her school during the summer. So, I guess that makes six conversations revolving around the telescopes.
UPGRADES: For the past year I have been working on the AL Double Star program. For the two years before that I worked on the AL Solar System program. This is the third year I have had the C11 on the mount. I kept thinking that someday I would switch ED80 with the C11, but I was fooling myself. Guests seem to like the C11. I don’t enjoy switching the OTAs, so I finally made the jump and added some upgrades.
C11 Upgrades: Baader 2”: clicklock back
ED80 Upgrades: New dovetail and backet so I could mount it piggyback, .8x focal reducer/field flattener, 2” – 1.25” Baader clicklock reducer.
DOUBLE STARS: I spent some quiet time last night hunting double stars in Orion. My targets were: Struve 747, Iota Orionis, Sigma Orionis, Zeta Orionis, and Gamma Leporis. I thought it would be an easy night, but I was wrong. My star charts didn’t have Struve 747 listed, I had to look it up on the Internet. I’ve been accustomed to using high power to split close doubles. In Orion there were stars everywhere. I had to use lower power to keep from getting lost. I had some great views at 15x. I was sure glad I put the ED80 on there. I missed those wide views.
LAST BUT NOT LEAST: I had to wait a few hours between my evening stars and morning stars, so I took a
