Telescope Case

Setting up the scope for each observing session takes around quarter of an hour, at least. A fair amount of this time is spent in and out of the house to get all the kit out. It takes the same time again to pack up afterwards before i can write up my log and get to bed.
It usually takes two to three trips for just the telescope, the OTA, the tripod and mount and a bag of bits including the tray, the tracking controls and the counterbalance weight.
I’ve looked for an inexpensive scope case to fit my Skywatcher 130M with little joy. I had a bright idea though and a quick search suggested that the large travel cover that golfers use to put their golf bag and clubs in might well do the job. I do play a bit of golf sometimes so I visited the local driving range to take a look and found one that was reasonably priced at £30 and had a bit of padding and wheels. I see from the link that the online price has gone up a tenner since though. A very helpful assistant asked me if I was taking my clubs on holiday and asked where I was going. “..erm no, it’s not for my clubs.”. I then had to explain it was for a telescope just in case he thought I was intending to move a body or anything.

A bit of work with a Stanley knife, a camping mat and a roll of gaffer tape and I’d made a protective sleeve for the OTA tube.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was away at the weekend so took the ‘scope in this, which fitted across the back seats without too much trouble. The whole thing is quite heavy although most of that is in the counterweight which I stuffed down at the bottom. It seems to provide reasonable protection. I do have to remember it contains a sensitive instrument rather that a set of clubs and not bash it around or wheel it up or down steps or kerbs.

 

Observations – Saturday 4 Aug 2012

Location: Worthing, in-laws back garden
Weather: mixed cloud. Moving quite quickly so changing opportunities. Dry.

22:00-ish First light on the new Skywatcher 9×50 RACI finder scope. It’s great-so much easier to use than RDF. You can see so much more. In fact I’m thinking it’s worth taking away with me when travelling. Even though i know where it is now, I was on the Ring Nebula, M57 within minutes.
Yeah, yeah, I know M57 again but I wanted to see if a couple of other factors improved the view. Firstly there is far less light pollution in Worthing, their street lights aren’t so orange, and being on the coast there is half the amount of light anyway. Well until the moon came out. More on that later.
Secondly I’d been to Sussex Astronomy Centre and bought a new eyepiece. I got a Skywatcher 6mm ultra wide eyepiece with 66deg APOV (apparent field of view).
M57 was really clear in it. I could really see the ring and the darker centre. I could also see that it wasn’t uniform all round.

Father in Law came out to see what i was up to at this point, so I moved on as this is perhaps a tricky target if you’ve not looked through a telescope before. So I showed him the double Albireo in Cygnus. The difference between the brighter yellow and it’s blue companion was very pronounced.

23:00-ish Then my Mother in Law came out, together with a lot of cloud so all I was able to show her was Vega directly above in Lyra and a few stars around it.

23:30-ishThey went in and my Brother in Law came out as the moon was clearing the trees. About two days past full. It was washing out much of the sky and reflecting off clouds and I think the sea a couple of streets to the south.
Had to put the moon filter on to cut the brightness and we went straight for the 6mm. Seeing was good. Hardly any rippling. Put the tracking on and observed along the terminator. Highlights were Mare (Lunar 100 #10) and the adjacent Cleomedes crater and a chain of 4 craters including Langrenus, Vendelinus, Petavius and Furnerius. Of these Petavius (Lunar 100 #16) was the most impressive with it’s central peak.
Takes my Lunar 100 count up to:
Observed 3/100
Imaged 8/100

24:00-ish. popped the Asda webcam into the eyepiece holder and fired up Sharpcam on the netbook to snap a couple of shots of the moon.

Mare Criseum and Cleomedes crater.

Craters on the terminator. You can see the central peak in light and shadow on Petavius

Indoor astronomy

A cloudy one tonight so I took the opportunity to sort some kit out. I ordered a new finderscope which arrived on Monday, a Skywatcher 9×50 RACI (right angled corrected image). I also ordered an extra base.
I attached the extra base with double sides sticky pads, butting it up to the collar of the OTA (optical tube assembly) to give it a bit of stability. I wasn’t ever intending to drill new holes in the OTA to fix it. The extra base was to take the old RDF (red dot finder) which I still might want to use. The extra base is to the right of the eyepiece holder in this photo.

I did set the scope up but only to test out aligning the finders with the OTA. Sky was just orange with cloud. Got everything lined up nice though and packed up.
I used to leave the RDF attached to the OTA but I didn’t think that was a great idea for either finder now. The RACI is too heavy so something will get damaged and I’d rather not put any strain on the sticky pads holding the RDF base on. An excuse then to reorganise the foam cutouts in my eyepiece case. It is satisfying to have everything fitted snugly in there. Left spaces for future eyepieces I have my eye on.

Final job of the evening was to wrap some red film round one of the camping lanterns and put a piece inside a torch so I have decent redlights so as not to impair the night vision when observing.