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Last night was one for the books

jimcoble2000
 

I will leave it for Kent to elaborate as I am just going to hit a high spot or two that I saw from my scope last night. Kent will have more doubtless especially on Saturn.

Roy, we owe you. As the clouds cleared off first thing, I noticed on the bright racked out alignment star there was absolutely zero air current distortion of the bulls eye diffraction pattern. A very rare occurrence of perfect rings with zero wavering but the best was yet to come.

I decided to go to Delt Cygni as Roy has spoken of having a spot of trouble seeing it the other night in a previous e mail. Roy was using his new three inch refractor which was still being broken in at the time. What would I see from Kent's back yard?

Delta is the bright star on "top" of the tip of the wing in Cygnus. The primary is an obvious 2.87 with a secondary of 6.64 magnitude. Separation is 2.78 arc seconds. Sky tolls lists at very challenging which does not mean a lot as recommendations frequently list things as harder than they really are. Target audience I suppose but not aimed at experienced observers usually.

The view was astounding and jaw dropping at 300x. Now you might ask what is so impressive about two dots of light in a whole universe of things to see but last night it was a very very rare sight. The 2.8 bright primary was a perfect, I am not kidding, dot with a perfect, continuous 360 degree inner diffraction ring that was not wavering one bit. I am not exaggerating. A little Saturn... and next to that bright ring sat the secondary, just a hair's split off the primary diffraction ring. It was just like looking down on Saturn from above the planet's pole with one moon in orbit. Perfect ring with no scintillation. In 40 to 50 years of observing I have seen good seeing, sometimes very good seeing, but never perfect seeing. We usually speak of seeing in relative terms of "ten for ten seeing" but typically it really is nine for ten, perfection being unobtainable. Until last night that is. Kent was amazed. I was amazed. There for the first time for me was really textbook definition perfection of steady air.

Textbooks will tell you that you cannot resolve two objects once the second object touches to inner primary diffraction ring. This is true but you almost NEVER get exactly on the razor's edge. Last night we did. It was a textbook optics and physics lesson. Amazing object in amazing conditions.

Now we felt we need to check up on Roy's observation with a similar scope and Kent had the perfect test scope, the TMB 80. I had one back years ago and without doubt those were the finest optics I have seen in a long line of telescopes. I now regret selling mine.  Kent broke out his TMB 80 and we tried with a similar scope size that Roy had used up north. BTW the TMB 80 is now exceptionally rare. I never seen one on the market. The scope was on a traveling mount that was not ideal but we were able to split the star using a three inch scope due to exceptional seeing. So it can be done in three inches of aperture. Heck even the double double looked like 4 Saturns with rings around each member.

I managed to go as low as 0.9 arc seconds on an equal 6th magnitude system later in the evening. We Went until  midnight and then I will let Kent take up the story................
Ian Stewart
 

Wow sounds like a great night Mark.

On 8/7/2022 8:28 AM, jimcoble2000 via groups.io wrote:

I will leave it for Kent to elaborate as I am just going to hit a high spot or two that I saw from my scope last night. Kent will have more doubtless especially on Saturn.

Roy, we owe you. As the clouds cleared off first thing, I noticed on the bright racked out alignment star there was absolutely zero air current distortion of the bulls eye diffraction pattern. A very rare occurrence of perfect rings with zero wavering but the best was yet to come.

I decided to go to Delt Cygni as Roy has spoken of having a spot of trouble seeing it the other night in a previous e mail. Roy was using his new three inch refractor which was still being broken in at the time. What would I see from Kent's back yard?

Delta is the bright star on "top" of the tip of the wing in Cygnus. The primary is an obvious 2.87 with a secondary of 6.64 magnitude. Separation is 2.78 arc seconds. Sky tolls lists at very challenging which does not mean a lot as recommendations frequently list things as harder than they really are. Target audience I suppose but not aimed at experienced observers usually.

The view was astounding and jaw dropping at 300x. Now you might ask what is so impressive about two dots of light in a whole universe of things to see but last night it was a very very rare sight. The 2.8 bright primary was a perfect, I am not kidding, dot with a perfect, continuous 360 degree inner diffraction ring that was not wavering one bit. I am not exaggerating. A little Saturn... and next to that bright ring sat the secondary, just a hair's split off the primary diffraction ring. It was just like looking down on Saturn from above the planet's pole with one moon in orbit. Perfect ring with no scintillation. In 40 to 50 years of observing I have seen good seeing, sometimes very good seeing, but never perfect seeing. We usually speak of seeing in relative terms of "ten for ten seeing" but typically it really is nine for ten, perfection being unobtainable. Until last night that is. Kent was amazed. I was amazed. There for the first time for me was really textbook definition perfection of steady air.

Textbooks will tell you that you cannot resolve two objects once the second object touches to inner primary diffraction ring. This is true but you almost NEVER get exactly on the razor's edge. Last night we did. It was a textbook optics and physics lesson. Amazing object in amazing conditions.

Now we felt we need to check up on Roy's observation with a similar scope and Kent had the perfect test scope, the TMB 80. I had one back years ago and without doubt those were the finest optics I have seen in a long line of telescopes. I now regret selling mine.  Kent broke out his TMB 80 and we tried with a similar scope size that Roy had used up north. BTW the TMB 80 is now exceptionally rare. I never seen one on the market. The scope was on a traveling mount that was not ideal but we were able to split the star using a three inch scope due to exceptional seeing. So it can be done in three inches of aperture. Heck even the double double looked like 4 Saturns with rings around each member.

I managed to go as low as 0.9 arc seconds on an equal 6th magnitude system later in the evening. We Went until  midnight and then I will let Kent take up the story................
jimcoble2000
 

Yes. A bright moon night so the typical fare of objects was ok but the star of the night was the conditions and the technical observation of doubles. I did get in a few clusters later in the evening as the moon was getting low in thew west. Got back home around 1220 and had the 4 inch in the balcony. Jupiter looked pretty good but the 4 really isn't a planet scope being a fast optical system. Just too hard to get the power needed. Jupiter can only take so much power though before it craps out unlike Saturn. The red spot was on the face and the opposite belt was very dark compared to last year. My five inch triplet refractor is better suited for this stuff.

On Sunday, August 7, 2022 at 08:32:51 AM EDT, Ian Stewart <swampcolliecoffee@...> wrote:


Wow sounds like a great night Mark.

On 8/7/2022 8:28 AM, jimcoble2000 via groups.io wrote:
I will leave it for Kent to elaborate as I am just going to hit a high spot or two that I saw from my scope last night. Kent will have more doubtless especially on Saturn.

Roy, we owe you. As the clouds cleared off first thing, I noticed on the bright racked out alignment star there was absolutely zero air current distortion of the bulls eye diffraction pattern. A very rare occurrence of perfect rings with zero wavering but the best was yet to come.

I decided to go to Delt Cygni as Roy has spoken of having a spot of trouble seeing it the other night in a previous e mail. Roy was using his new three inch refractor which was still being broken in at the time. What would I see from Kent's back yard?

Delta is the bright star on "top" of the tip of the wing in Cygnus. The primary is an obvious 2.87 with a secondary of 6.64 magnitude. Separation is 2.78 arc seconds. Sky tolls lists at very challenging which does not mean a lot as recommendations frequently list things as harder than they really are. Target audience I suppose but not aimed at experienced observers usually.

The view was astounding and jaw dropping at 300x. Now you might ask what is so impressive about two dots of light in a whole universe of things to see but last night it was a very very rare sight. The 2.8 bright primary was a perfect, I am not kidding, dot with a perfect, continuous 360 degree inner diffraction ring that was not wavering one bit. I am not exaggerating. A little Saturn... and next to that bright ring sat the secondary, just a hair's split off the primary diffraction ring. It was just like looking down on Saturn from above the planet's pole with one moon in orbit. Perfect ring with no scintillation. In 40 to 50 years of observing I have seen good seeing, sometimes very good seeing, but never perfect seeing. We usually speak of seeing in relative terms of "ten for ten seeing" but typically it really is nine for ten, perfection being unobtainable. Until last night that is. Kent was amazed. I was amazed. There for the first time for me was really textbook definition perfection of steady air.

Textbooks will tell you that you cannot resolve two objects once the second object touches to inner primary diffraction ring. This is true but you almost NEVER get exactly on the razor's edge. Last night we did. It was a textbook optics and physics lesson. Amazing object in amazing conditions.

Now we felt we need to check up on Roy's observation with a similar scope and Kent had the perfect test scope, the TMB 80. I had one back years ago and without doubt those were the finest optics I have seen in a long line of telescopes. I now regret selling mine.  Kent broke out his TMB 80 and we tried with a similar scope size that Roy had used up north. BTW the TMB 80 is now exceptionally rare. I never seen one on the market. The scope was on a traveling mount that was not ideal but we were able to split the star using a three inch scope due to exceptional seeing. So it can be done in three inches of aperture. Heck even the double double looked like 4 Saturns with rings around each member.

I managed to go as low as 0.9 arc seconds on an equal 6th magnitude system later in the evening. We Went until  midnight and then I will let Kent take up the story................
charles jagow
 

Last night was cloudy here in Westcliffe. 

 

Thursday evening, I had returned from a 16 hour road trip to retrieve my new scope.  Some of you may remember the Obsession 18UC I bought from AstroMart in 2018 from a fellow who NEVER even got to look through the scope due to health reasons.  I used it for several years at the Boardwalk and Skywatch and bitched and moaned continuously about it being so flimsy.  It would not hold collimation through a Skywatch session.  It was good at Boardwalk as I usually kept the scope on Saturn or Jupiter the whole night.  I can’t tell you how much time and effort ($$$) was spent to make the scope more robust.  I had many, many conversations with Dave K. , the owner of Obsession, and with the owner of ServoCat  Gary.  In April of this year I finally pulled the trigger and yanked ALL of the guts out of the Obsession UC exoskeleton and drove them to Randy at Astro Systems here in La Salle Colorado.  Thursday was the day I went to retrieve my reworked 18” telescope.  I will not bore you with the traffic through Denver, and Colorado Springs.  I had to endure the traffic twice, up/back.  When  I arrived to get the scope, Randy was finishing up a few items and since we are both somewhat talkers, the few items stretched what should have been forty minutes into about three hours.  I got home Thursday evening about 8:20 PM and it was cloudy.  I unpacked the truck and setup the new telescope while it was fresh in my mind.  By eleven thirty I found Vega peeking out of the clouds slightly.  Rolled the 18” out and checked collimation on Vega, which kind of looked blueish and fuzzy due to the clouds.  Friday I spent tweaking the new scope.  Set up where exactly I wanted the finder scope and TelRad as well as placing my controller stalk to hold the Nexus Pro DSC and the ServoCat hand pad.  When nightfall came it was again cloudy.

 

I awoke a little after midnight and glanced outside and found that the clouds had cleared and the temp was 55 degrees.  I rolled the 18 Tele Kit (TK) outside on my driveway and pushed it to Jupiter.  OMG, it was clear and steady!  I went ahead and did a two star alignment and asked the ServoCat to go to Albireo, ServoCat must have the wrong data in its parameter files and failed to slew, I could move the scope around fine with the manual slew buttons but GoTos were not working.  So I drove it to Saturn and again an OMG moment.  Started upping the magnification until I reached my 3mm Nagler at 635x.  I then started bouncing about looking at Albireo, M45, M57, M51 (spiral structure was seen in the larger of the two), M81 and M82. Vega was so beautiful as was Altair.  Pushing focus in/out yielded just as Mark said, perfect circles with no wavy diffraction lines, the lines were all concentric and STEADY.  I swung the scope to Neptune and put my 5mm Pentax XW in and could see Triton!  Uranus was so crisp and well defined as was Neptune.  Jupiter was simply awesome and to steal the words from a fellow who has been known to consume hundreds of Tuckahoe boiled hot dogs, “it was the best I have ever seen it”.  that Friday night/Saturday morning session was simply the best I have ever had.  I pushed the scope back into the garage about twenty minutes before sunrise and went back and claimed my spot in bed for a few minutes. 

 

It looks like the sky steadiness and clarity moved its way East during the day for you folks last night.  I have never seen stars look perfectly still and almost planetary.  Usually Polaris is that bright point of light with its dim little companion.  It appeared as two distinct dots of light, much clearer that I have ever seen it.  The Garnet Star, a bright carbon star was mind blowing as was Albireo.  My neighbor’s house prevented me from finding WZ CAS which is a double in Cassiopeia that consists of a brilliant blue star whose companion is a bright red carbon star.

 

And of course clouds are predicted for the next twenty or so years here in Westcliffe…

 

 

 

 

From: <BackBayAstro@groups.io> on behalf of "jimcoble2000 via groups.io" <jimcoble2000@...>
Reply-To: <BackBayAstro@groups.io>
Date: Sunday, August 7, 2022 at 6:28 AM
To: Kent Blackwell <kent@...>, Roy Diffrient <mail@...>, David Wright <kd3wright@...>, BBAA-Group <backbayastro@groups.io>
Subject: [BackBayAstro] Last night was one for the books

 

I will leave it for Kent to elaborate as I am just going to hit a high spot or two that I saw from my scope last night. Kent will have more doubtless especially on Saturn.

 

Roy, we owe you. As the clouds cleared off first thing, I noticed on the bright racked out alignment star there was absolutely zero air current distortion of the bulls eye diffraction pattern. A very rare occurrence of perfect rings with zero wavering but the best was yet to come.

 

I decided to go to Delt Cygni as Roy has spoken of having a spot of trouble seeing it the other night in a previous e mail. Roy was using his new three inch refractor which was still being broken in at the time. What would I see from Kent's back yard?

 

Delta is the bright star on "top" of the tip of the wing in Cygnus. The primary is an obvious 2.87 with a secondary of 6.64 magnitude. Separation is 2.78 arc seconds. Sky tolls lists at very challenging which does not mean a lot as recommendations frequently list things as harder than they really are. Target audience I suppose but not aimed at experienced observers usually.

 

The view was astounding and jaw dropping at 300x. Now you might ask what is so impressive about two dots of light in a whole universe of things to see but last night it was a very very rare sight. The 2.8 bright primary was a perfect, I am not kidding, dot with a perfect, continuous 360 degree inner diffraction ring that was not wavering one bit. I am not exaggerating. A little Saturn... and next to that bright ring sat the secondary, just a hair's split off the primary diffraction ring. It was just like looking down on Saturn from above the planet's pole with one moon in orbit. Perfect ring with no scintillation. In 40 to 50 years of observing I have seen good seeing, sometimes very good seeing, but never perfect seeing. We usually speak of seeing in relative terms of "ten for ten seeing" but typically it really is nine for ten, perfection being unobtainable. Until last night that is. Kent was amazed. I was amazed. There for the first time for me was really textbook definition perfection of steady air.

 

Textbooks will tell you that you cannot resolve two objects once the second object touches to inner primary diffraction ring. This is true but you almost NEVER get exactly on the razor's edge. Last night we did. It was a textbook optics and physics lesson. Amazing object in amazing conditions.

 

Now we felt we need to check up on Roy's observation with a similar scope and Kent had the perfect test scope, the TMB 80. I had one back years ago and without doubt those were the finest optics I have seen in a long line of telescopes. I now regret selling mine.  Kent broke out his TMB 80 and we tried with a similar scope size that Roy had used up north. BTW the TMB 80 is now exceptionally rare. I never seen one on the market. The scope was on a traveling mount that was not ideal but we were able to split the star using a three inch scope due to exceptional seeing. So it can be done in three inches of aperture. Heck even the double double looked like 4 Saturns with rings around each member.

 

I managed to go as low as 0.9 arc seconds on an equal 6th magnitude system later in the evening. We Went until  midnight and then I will let Kent take up the story................

 


--

v/r

v/r

Chuck Jagow

Member – Dark Skies of The Wet Mountain Valley

Member - Back Bay Amateur Astronomers

Member – San Diego Astronomy Association

Member – Colorado Springs Astronomy Association

Future         Verde Mont Observatory

Gone...        Rott'n Paws Observatory

 

 
Roy Diffrient
 

Mostly clouds and rain here, maybe because I’ve opened the boxes for a new small telescope, as Mark said.  But I’m still in the assembly and checkout phase with it, so I’ll say more later on it.

Roy


On Aug 7, 2022, at 8:28 AM, Mark Ost <jimcoble2000@...> wrote:


I will leave it for Kent to elaborate as I am just going to hit a high spot or two that I saw from my scope last night. Kent will have more doubtless especially on Saturn.

Roy, we owe you. As the clouds cleared off first thing, I noticed on the bright racked out alignment star there was absolutely zero air current distortion of the bulls eye diffraction pattern. A very rare occurrence of perfect rings with zero wavering but the best was yet to come.

I decided to go to Delt Cygni as Roy has spoken of having a spot of trouble seeing it the other night in a previous e mail. Roy was using his new three inch refractor which was still being broken in at the time. What would I see from Kent's back yard?

Delta is the bright star on "top" of the tip of the wing in Cygnus. The primary is an obvious 2.87 with a secondary of 6.64 magnitude. Separation is 2.78 arc seconds. Sky tolls lists at very challenging which does not mean a lot as recommendations frequently list things as harder than they really are. Target audience I suppose but not aimed at experienced observers usually.

The view was astounding and jaw dropping at 300x. Now you might ask what is so impressive about two dots of light in a whole universe of things to see but last night it was a very very rare sight. The 2.8 bright primary was a perfect, I am not kidding, dot with a perfect, continuous 360 degree inner diffraction ring that was not wavering one bit. I am not exaggerating. A little Saturn... and next to that bright ring sat the secondary, just a hair's split off the primary diffraction ring. It was just like looking down on Saturn from above the planet's pole with one moon in orbit. Perfect ring with no scintillation. In 40 to 50 years of observing I have seen good seeing, sometimes very good seeing, but never perfect seeing. We usually speak of seeing in relative terms of "ten for ten seeing" but typically it really is nine for ten, perfection being unobtainable. Until last night that is. Kent was amazed. I was amazed. There for the first time for me was really textbook definition perfection of steady air.

Textbooks will tell you that you cannot resolve two objects once the second object touches to inner primary diffraction ring. This is true but you almost NEVER get exactly on the razor's edge. Last night we did. It was a textbook optics and physics lesson. Amazing object in amazing conditions.

Now we felt we need to check up on Roy's observation with a similar scope and Kent had the perfect test scope, the TMB 80. I had one back years ago and without doubt those were the finest optics I have seen in a long line of telescopes. I now regret selling mine.  Kent broke out his TMB 80 and we tried with a similar scope size that Roy had used up north. BTW the TMB 80 is now exceptionally rare. I never seen one on the market. The scope was on a traveling mount that was not ideal but we were able to split the star using a three inch scope due to exceptional seeing. So it can be done in three inches of aperture. Heck even the double double looked like 4 Saturns with rings around each member.

I managed to go as low as 0.9 arc seconds on an equal 6th magnitude system later in the evening. We Went until  midnight and then I will let Kent take up the story................
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