Bear with me while I go on one of my usual rants. I figure better to have rants than to not have anything to write about at all :) Seeing how I just received my new second hand Vixen Porta mount, I was itching to try out my new bigger "grab and go" setup for home and for my jaunts to semi dark/ dark skies. My Celestron/Vixen C6 has been needing a new mount for a while now. I used to have it mounted on my EQ3-2 mount, functioning in alt-az mode. This setup has served me well and has seen so many trips to my dark sky site back in Brisbane, Australia, as well as to Mount Pinos in SoCal.
Lately the old workhorse (I got the mount with the scope way back in 2001, so the mount is about 11 years old now! It has been through so many configurations, the latest being the addition of wooden legs to the whole shebang to get rid of vibrations) has been slipping up, as in gear slipping. Its fine for visual use, but when I try to do afocal photography with my Orion Steadypix mount and my Kodak Z990, the constant slipping becomes very annoying. While doing my usual daily perusing of the Astromart classifieds, I saw a used Vixen Porta mount for a very good price (and the seller was absorbing shipping!) Needless to say I jumped on the deal immediately. The mount was shipped on Thursday and promply arrived at my doorstep the following Monday morning! Setting up the mount was super easy. Just remove the tripod legs from the packaging and then using allen keys, attach the mount head to the legs. The seller was kind enough to enclose a Vixen dovetail plate (and its associated screws). Turns out I did not need the plate as my "non standard" dovetail plate fit just nicely in the groove of the mount. Excellent! I also liked the way the tripod collapsed, as the legs could be totally folded inward, making carrying the mount a breeze. The mount was also much lighter than my current mount (well until I attach the wooden legs...might do that at some stage!) and super stable. I now understand why so many people like these new alt-az mounts!
Anyways as with every scope/mount/eyepiece purchase, the weather curse struck. The skies were either cloudy or covered in marine layer for pretty much the whole week. But the forecast was for clear skies for the weekend. Yippee. I had originally planned to drive to my Malibu site to try the mount out but that did not pan out. Well I am planning to do that this weekend!!!! So I did the next best thing, I tried out the mount from my playground observatory in Culver City ;) The targets were all galaxies (its that time of the year), so this was a rather stringent test I guess. First up I went for some easy prey, to ease myself into the observing session and to allow my eyes to do some dark adaptation. M 35 and NGC 2392, the eskimo nebula in Gemini were both were nice. I next went for my first urban galaxy, one I know will be visible, M104, the sombrero galaxy in Corvus. Now this galaxy is ridiculously easy under aussie skies as it is pretty high up in the skies. From the northern hemisphere though, Corvus sits much lower, so the galaxy loses some of its punch. My best views came at 125x with the 6mm TV Radian in place. The galaxy showed its central bulge and tapering arms. the dust lane eluded me from my light polluted site. I noted how nice and "vibration free" my views were.
Next up were some celestial galaxy pairings. I went for M65 and M66 in Leo as the constellation was riding very high in the sky. Best views came in at 37.5x with the Orion Expanse 20mm. I suspected their presence at 30x with the Meade 24.5mm SWA eyepiece in place, but they were clearly visible, well with a little difficulty at 37.5x. The pairing of Bode's galaxy M81 and M82 in Ursa Major looked even better! M81's core was blazingly bright. M82's shape could be easily discerned. And I stumbled on something. Just for fun I popped in my Orion Skyglow filter to see if it could improve the views of both galaxy pairs. My suspicion was confirmed, the broadband filter did make the galaxies much easier to see, probably the function of improving the contrast between the background and the galaxies themselves. I now have a new galaxy busting secret weapon (I guess this only applies if the galaxies are bright enough to be visible without the filter!).
I finished off the night with some bright objects. With Mars and Saturn riding very high in the skies, its hard to not take a look at them. While the seeing wasn't the best, fleeting moments of good seeing allowed me to see some nice detail on the planets. Seeing how the mount was so stable, I bumped up the magnification to 250x. I was in high mag heaven. I love the Porta mount!!!!
So yes I did have quite a fruitful night under my light polluted skies. Next stop Malibu...and hopefully clear skies!
