Its the end of the year...time for....astro resolutions!

Well folks its that time of the year again. Time for renewal, time for change, time to dust off whatever you had good intentions at the start of the year to do, or finish and never got round to doing. Its funny how time flies past after making a to do list and discovering you have not even accomplished a single thing to check off that list. Its time to make good. What better time right?

I must admit that I did accomplish some of the things I set out to do, maybe not to my best ability, but I tried very hard. Last year I made a pact to myself to observe more (which I did since I discovered Solstice Canyon in Malibu, almost every new moon when the weather cooperated...and I did 4 runs out of the 6 to Pinos...good record), to get my 10" dob out to dark sky sites (which I did on two occasions to Mount Pinos thanks to our new Mazda5!), to sketch new objects (which I also did, although not as many as I would have liked, but still I did), to try to spread the joys of stargazing (which I did through friends and via selling beginner scopes on the internet), to try out more scopes (which I also did), to write more on my blog (which I tried to at every opportunity I got) and to dabble in astrophotography (which I did through afocal methods, wide field and also CCD camming).

So what's in it for me this coming new year. Lets see the list looks pretty similar to last years list, but I want to do MORE MORE and still MORE. I am going to break it down into points so I can really check off this list of TO DO's:

• Get my 10" out at every available opportunity, not just for runs to Pinos. That means using it at the mouth of Solstice Canyon Park.
• Plan my observing runs better. That means reading more and making list of objects to look at. No more random hopping around .
• Sketch at least 5 new objects at every session I get at Solstice Canyon (and Pinos in season). No excuses now since I have a tracking GOTO mount.
• Do more scope review articles and shootouts if time and money allows.
• Try out a SCT or Mak....if the opportunity arises and does not overstretch my budget.
• Look out for more good scope deals (got some excellent deals this year from Costco, Orion and Walmart!).
• Blog more (which I have been diligently doing anyways...its fun to be able to share my experiences with other like minded people).
• Use all my scopes equally....also hard when you have faves. And my current fave scope is my Celestron 102GT for the ease of finding stuff, plus it helps me sketch as it tracks..I need to use my C6 more frequently!
• Get my Meade DSI I color to work properly. No excuses anymore as I can use my Celestron 102GT for short exposures for stacking and I now have a Orion 0.5x focal reducer...have to get cracking on that one. I am still pretty much a visual observer by nature and it is really hard for me to get into the imaging mode when all I want to do is look and drink in views.
• Most importantly NOT avoid the moon but observe it, and the planets as well and not just DSO's!

Seems like that is it for the time being. I will probably be adding on to this list as time goes and when some crazy cockamamie scheme comes up in my delusional mind. Till then have fun, have a great holiday and clear dark skies......if I don't blog again before the year ends that is ;)

Small beginners scope shoot-out 8th of December 2012

Its funny how things sometimes don't turn out the way you want it to. My plan for tonight was to just take it easy and do some nice semi dark sky observing from my usual site at Solstice Canyon in Malibu. I had with me my Celestron NexStar 102GT and my new old stock Orion 76mm 3 SpaceProbe. I had plans to do a small scope shootout between the latter and the Celestron Powerseeker 70mm refractor, seeing how both have very similar apertures. However I deemed tonight to not be that night. Weather reports had the skies down as clear all night. But seeing how the weather has been so iffy the last couple of nights, especially with the marine layer and all, I was not holding out for a long observing session. But I did not intend for it to end the way it did either. I got to my site at about 10pm and hiked into the park, only to find that Terry was not there. No biggie. I will just set up and get some observing done myself. As it turns out I only managed 1 hour before the fog rolled in. The air was very moist and the OTA's were all drenched in dew. Geeze only managed to look at M42 and M31and its companion galaxies. So much for semi dark sky observing. After beating a hasty retreat and getting back on the road, I noticed the fog lifting as I drove away from Malibu. Turns out I should have just stayed at home!

It was 11.30pm by the time I got home. Seeing how the skies were clear, I decided to do what I had planned to do in the first place anyway, have a small scope shootout. I had recently acquired four small scopes (two Orion FunScopes) on my trip to NorCal over Thanksgiving. The two I was going to put head to head was the Orion SpaceProbe 3 and the Celestron Powerseeker 70mm. Its amazing what you can get for so little money these days. I remember back in the day I could not even afford a 60mm alt-az refractor with its pathetic 0.965" accessories. For less that a hundred greenbacks, one can get a fully functional telescope these days. All one has to do is be careful where you buy them from. Most scopes in these price range have fairly decent optics capable of opening up newbies to the wonders of stargazing. The bugbear of these scopes has always been their substandard accessories and totally inadequate mounts. Both these scopes had most things in the right place, decent optics, a okay if not fantastic alt az mount (which is easier to master and makes more sense on small scopes such as these...I do NOT recommend EQ mounts for beginners since it takes a while to get used to its motions) and some serviceable accessories.

The SpaceProbe 3 came with 25mm and 10mm Orion Explorer II 3 element eyepieces which looked to be fully coated and a pathetic 5x24 stoppered down finder (I got this scope on clearance as they were cleaning out their warehouse......for a crazy price so who can refuse?), a collimation cap, a short screwdriver for collimation and the primary mirror was center spotted (nice touch Orion!). The 70mm Powerseeker I purchased brand new. Also a fantastic Black Friday price. Scope came with an alt az mount not unlike the one on the Orion, but I noticed the legs were of a much thinner stamped aluminum. Unlike the Orion, this scope came with the preferred red dot finder (similar to the Orion EzFinder II), a plus point, an erect image diagonal, plastic Ramsden and HM eyepieces (20mm, 10mm and 6mm from memory) and a dinky plastic tubed 3x barlow. Other than the finder, everything else was a setback from the accessories that came with the Orion. Also the optics on these only seemed coated. I guess with a rather long focal length, this scope should perform okay.

As they say, the scope is only as good as the mount that holds it. This rings true, whether it be for advanced scopes costing thousands of dollars, or beginner scopes. The main problem with "departmental store" junk scopes has always decent to great optics mounted on junky tripods that quiver like jello when rapped. Both these scopes had similar looking mounts. But this is where the similarity ends. The Orion SpaceProbe had a really nice alt az mount that was a joy to use. The slow mo knob for altazimuth worked very well and I found myself thinking I was using a dob mount at times. The Sky and Telescope reviews for this scope had the same conclusion. The Powerseeker alt az mount looked similar to the SpaceProbe, on the surface. However the tripod legs and metal tripod head were of a lighter variety and not as stable. Vibrations took a hell longer to dampen down as opposed to the SpaceProbe 3.

With both the scopes setup, I was ready to roll. Its nice how light these scopes are. I managed to carry both of them downstairs easily. They also have adjustable tripods so they should accomodate kids (and kidults ;) of all heights. Plonking them down was easy enough. After getting the Powerseeker's finderscope aligned using Sirius, I set out to compare and contrast the scopes. Getting the right magnification to match both scopes was easy too as both had the same 700mm focal length. It was also fortuitious that the Spaceprobe 3 came with a 25mm Explorer II eyepiece to match my lowest power eyepiece, my Meade 24.5mm SWA. From the get go, I decided to use my Orion Dielectric diagonal on the Powerseeker to allow it to reach its maximum potential. I had four objects in mind for testing, Sirius A for star testing; M45, the Pleiades for star testing and flatness of field and coma, M42, the Orion Nebula to measure light throughput and finally the king of planets Jupiter and its four moons for clarity, sharpness and contrast. Summarised below are my findings:

Sirius A: Nice airy rings from the Spaceprobe 3. Star focused down to a nice point, with difrraction spikes visible. Powerseeker showed astigmatism and pinched optics. Would not focus down to a point. Pattern's on both sides of focus not symmetrical.
M45, the Pleiades: Same case as the above. Powerseeker had a flatter field of view and next to no coma. Field was not as flat in the SpaceProbe 3, but nevertheless views were outstanding. Probably due to its long focal length, coma was almost absent. I though I could detect some blurring towards the edges but that could be just me.
M42, The Orion Nebula: SpaceProbe 3 threw up brighter views, despite having a central obstruction. Contrast was also a tad higher on the Spaceprobe 3. This is funny as I expected the refractor to beat it hands down in this respect. Orion's wings were made even more apparent when I used the NPB filter in both the scopes.
Jupiter: No contest here. SpaceProbe wins hands down. This is surprising too as I expected the refractor to do well in this respect. Must have been the pinched optics or something (see below for details). The planetary disk was super sharp in my 6mm Radian, giving a magnification of 117x. Since Jupiter's opposition was just last weekend, the planet exhibited a huge disc with abundant detail. In addition to the two main equatorial bands, I detected at least two other thinner bands, as well as ruffling in the bands. The views were reminiscent of the 102GT and C6, although with slightly less resolution. I don't remember my firstscope, the navy blue 76mm Explorer alt az giving such good planetary views. Must have been the collimation.

Due to the substandard performance of the Powerseeker, I decided to tinker with it in the daytime to see what could be causing its poor performance. Every refractor I have encountered so far has been good off the bat, with the exception of a crazily stoppered down 60mm Japanese scope (JUNK) and the 90mm ST plastic piece of junk I got from Hong Kong. Looking down the business end of the scope , I could see that there was indeed a plastic retaining ring holding down the air spaced achromatic lens. I loosened this, held the OTA upright and gave it a few raps to make sure the objective sat properly in place. I also checked it collimation and found it a little off. The main problem is the plastic focuser drawtube. There is too much play in it when one racks in and out. This is indeed a problem. I wonder if one could wrap some sort of tape around the drawtube to reduce the "play"(Addentum: There are two small set screws at the top of the focuser that can be used to shim the drawtube to remove the slop. Will give that a go and give you guys an update). That is a real bummer as I was all ready to embrace the 70mm Powerseeker as the new entry level 60mm scopes of the past. Celestron will have to work out the kinks and probably have better QC if this scope is to be a contender. Maybe I am being too harsh, but at that price point, there are better alternatives to this scope.

In conclusion, the Orion SpaceProbe 3 came out tops and I can heartily recommend it as a beginner scope. As it has a long focal length, it will give brilliant sharp views of solar system objects, something that beginners usually gravitate to when starting. The accessories that come with it is sufficient that one does not feel the need to get additional accessories. Also it has a rather sturdy mount and is height adjustable to it can appeal to kids of all ages, putting the eyepiece at just the right height to avoid bending and kneeling. 76mm gathers more light than the defacto beginners scope, the 60mm refractor, so one can start to hunt down some of the brighter DSO. While the FunScope is a great bargain and can be an introduction to the hobby, I personally feel that this scope will be used longer since it provides a good range of magnification. The FunScope is only good for low powered views, and from experience, anything above 50x magnification becomes blurry, no matter how well you collimate the optics. Its just the nature of the beast when you have such a short focal length spherical mirror. It is a good introduction, spur of the moment scope you want to break out when seeing is not optimal. By contrast, the SpaceProbe 3, with its almost diffraction limited optics can be brought out and used as a serious observing scope. I disagree with many that small scopes cannot be used as a serious deep sky scope. With dark enough skies and persistence, I don't think you can exhaust all there is to see with such a scope.

Small scope shootout from Solstice Canyon, Malibu, 10th of Nov 2012

This has probably been in the works for a while now. I have not done a side by side shootout between two similar aperture scopes for some time. Seeing how my small'ish scopes have continued to "breed", I felt this was as good a time as any. These two scopes also compliment each other very well as I can use one of them to take quick peeks, whilst the other goes on it merry electronic way, whirling and clicking as it searches out its quarry. The two scopes I am referring to are my Orion SkyScanner 100mm and Celestron NexStar 102GT. One is a newtonian refractor, and the other a long focal length doublet achromat. Its funny how one equates to a 100mm reflector as being a small beginner scope, while a 102mm refractor is regarded as a serious intermediate scope. I have also not had such a "big" refractor in my arsenal, since selling both my short tube scopes back in oz (Orion 80ST and Synta 102mm f/5). I also briefly owned a really dodgy chinese made "plastic" tubed 90mm ST, which I obtained from Hong Kong some years ago that was great for terrestrial views but terrible for night sky views.

 

Anyways I have had the Celestron NexStar 102GT for more than a month now and have had time to work out all its idiosyncracies and  kinks. There were issues with getting the GOTO to work properly, optimizing the visual views, etc etc. See my last blog post about this. The GOTO now works really nicely and battery life seems to be very good despite what a lot of people have mentioned, so much so I don't feel the need to get a Celestron Power Tank (well I did consider getting a cigarette lighter power cable). I also noted that it was pretty cold that night, maybe not as cold as Pinos on my previous trip. The batteries and the GOTO did not fail me this time. Thank goodness.

I arrived at my semi rural Solstice Canyon site at a little past 10.30pm and set up my scopes side by side (literally). My Orion SkyScanner found itself perched on its usual mount, the Orion Paragon photo tripod. Setting up the 102GT was much easier. Just slide the dovetail of the OTA into the groove of the fork mount, plug in the hand controller and the power source and there ya go. I tried to replicate similar FOV and magnification's for both scopes since the the SkyScanner has about half the focal length of the 102GT (400mm versus 1000mm) by using my lowest powered ep, the 13mm Orion Stratus in the SkyScanner for 31x magnification and the 24.5mm Meade SWA for 41x. I then proceeded to hit several DSO's over the course of three hours. Familliar objects were easy, whilst with harder ones, I tried to copy the starhop the GOTO used.

Started off with showcase objects such as M42, the Orion Nebula, M45, the Pleiades, M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, M33, the Triangulum pinwheel galaxy, M76, the Little Dumbbell Nebula, NGC 2392, the Eskimo Nebula, NGC 7662, the Blue Snowball Nebula, M1, the Crab Nebula, M78, Orion reflection nebula, M79, Lepus Globular as well as some open clusters such as M35 (Gemini), M36/37/38 (Auriga), NGC 869/884 (Perseus) Double Cluster. Later in the night I decided to trawl the galaxy rich Fornax/Eridanus region for southern galaxies. It was fun to once again visit NGC 1365, 1300, 1316 among others. Here are my eyepiece impressions of all objects:

M42 (Orion Nebula) Nice looking. Outer tendrils more obvious without the NPB filter in place when looking through the refractor. Wider FOV in SkyScanner made for a more asthetically pleasing views, but with NPB in place.
M45 (Pleiades) Cleaner looking stars in the refractor but once again the SkyScanner threw up a nicer wide FOV view
M31 (Andromeda Galaxy) More contrasty views of the galaxy's dust lane in the refractor, but I liked the wide FOV views given by the SkyScanner as it showed the full expanse of the galaxy
M33 (Triangulum Galaxy) The wider FOV tended to concentrate the galaxy better, but the refractor threw up very contrasty views at its lowest magnification
M76 (Little Dumbbell Nebula) Both scopes gave better views of this smaller object, although the refractor again wins out with its more contrasty views
NGC2392 (Eskimo Nebula) Its a running trend here. Small objects requiring magnification do better in the refractor. Its amazing how little if any false color there is on these objects. I can start to make out the dual ring nature, which is way more obvious in my 10".
NGC7662 (Blue Snowball) Again views in refractor wins here. Little internal detail is visible though. Small planetaries are best viewed at ridiculous magnifications in big scopes, such as my 10"
M1 (Crab Nebula) Again the refractor wins out. The nebula just seemed more defined with "harder" edges
M78 Much like the crab nebula, the edges just seem more defined in the refractor. Maybe I have to flock my SkyScanner.
All galaxies appeared better in the refractor, probably due to its superior contrast. The background was just darker in the refractor. I am wondering if flocking the SkyScanner OTA would level the playing field.
Larger open clusters looked prettier in the SkyScanner, if one ignores the seagulls cause by coma closer to the edges of the FOV. Smaller open clusters looked very pretty in the refractor, again due to its superior contrast.

So in conclusion, planetary views are heaps better in the refractor. I also found that the refractor can be pushed to higher magnifications with minimal image breakdown, in comparison to the SkyScanner. I generally found the images optimal at about 100x magnification for the SkyScanner. In that aspect, the refractor threw up nice and more contrasty images of small planetary nebulae and planets. Brightness between both scopes was on par, and detail in objects was just a tad better in the refractor. I am not sure if this is due to the unobstructed aperture of the refractor, or its superior contrast, since viewing DSO's is all about the contrast between the sky and the object in question. The other thing that was annoying in the reflector that was absent in the refractor was the size of the sweet spot where the field remained aberration free. With the short focal length reflector, the off axis coma was annoying as anything that was not in the center of the FOV was distorted (i.e. hard if you were trying to sweep up some planetary nebula as you could not distinguish the stars from the planetary nebula). So which scope would I choose. This is a hard one as both scopes compliment each other so well. Both fill a roll, even when used in tandem. The big plus is both scopes are light and can be carried in one sitting when using my Orion carry bag. I rather carry these two scopes than the C6 by itself on the Vixen Porta, my previously most used scope. That says a lot. The Orion SkyScanner is a great waiting for the GOTO, super duper quick wide field scope. And speaking of wide field, the SkyScanner is an excellent panning scope. This is something I cannot do with the longer focal length 102GT refractor. Also using the dob mount is pure joy when panning. The GOTO mount cannot be used for panning as it can only move manually in altazimuth.

So what's up next? I think I am getting shootout fever. I recently purchased some small scopes over the Thanksgiving/Black Friday period and I am hoping to pan some of these scopes off to newbies with the hopes of igniting their passions for stargazing. The two interesting scopes that will go head to head include a Orion 3 inch SpaceProbe which I got for a good price on clearance from the Cupertino Orion store, and also a 70mm Celestron Powerseeker I got off Walmart. And when the dust finally settles, I will pit my most used scope to date, my Celestron/Vixen C6 on Vixen PortaMount against my Celestron 102GT. I am sure the GT will hold its own in terms of planetary and lunar views. DSO's might be more of a stretch...stay tuned!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i.e. photos taken by Terry Nakazono on a different observing run. We were only there from 11pm to about 2am.