Observing Notesfrom the Tuckahoe IrregularsDoug Norton and I went to the Tuckahoe ball field last night. We only stayed about three hours, as the seeing was only slightly above average, and neither of us had a list of objects to "discover" -- but we both had new eyepieces and wanted to check them out. Yesterday morning I had picked up my new Pentax 21 eyepiece from Cutler Camera in Dover, so I spent at least half the time last night looking through it with my C8. The 21 is excellent. It's as bright as the Pentax 40, with twice the magnification -- just shy of 100 power with my C8. The 21 was so clear and sharp that both Doug and I were able to pick out the 5th star in the Trapezium in Orion with ease, hours before Orion reached its zenith. The Cassini Division in Saturn's rings was visible with the 21 (though only at the "edges" of Saturn, where the rings turn back on themselves.) M77 near Cetus actually seemed to have some detail with this eyepiece; in the past the Pentax 40 left the image too small, and the P-14 and 10.5 made it too faint. Also, bright nebulae and galaxies look great with the 21 and my new Orion Skyglow filter. Cloud and texture detail in the Orion Nebula was extreme. We looked at M82, and could see the dust lanes in the edge-on galaxy with the 21 and the filter, even at only 100 power. Doug brought his Televue Genesis refractor, and tested his new 24mm Televue wide field eyepiece. We looked at M37 in Auriga, and the cluster was gorgeous, centered in his field of view and surrounded by the background sky. The stars were pinpoints, focused to such fine dots that it looked like someone had spent time with an insulin needle, punching tiny holes through a piece of backlit black satin. We tried his eyepiece on my scope, too, and the star images seemed better than my 21's. Oh well. What else could I expect from something named "Televue"? Near the end of our evening, about 8:45, we looked at Jupiter with my scope and the panoply of Pentax eyepieces I own. The 21 showed surface detail with amazing contrast (though the image wasn't very big.) The 10.5 showed a moon-sized image that was so bright I had to put my three-stop moon filter on the eyepiece; then we could see faint festoons along the dark/light cloud borders. The sky was best to the southeast and up to the zenith. Around the horizon the city glow was pretty bright, and the sky was gray rather than black to the north and west. Nevertheless it wasn't a bad night. A slight breeze was only barely noticeable. The air seemed to be fairly stable and was extremely dry. Nothing of mine collected any frost or water, an unusual occurrence at the ball field. I probably could have seen more, but my eyes/mind were out of stargazing practice. A couple of puppies, a matched pair of hunting dog bookends that may have been left behind by someone, had wandered in at sunset and begged us all night to take them in. The ground was cold, and my fingers burned whenever I had to touch anything without gloves. We were the only two who showed up, so at 9 we packed up and left. When I arrived home at 9:30, my outdoor thermometer showed 20 degrees. Steven Long |