Observing Report - September 12, 2015

13 Sep 2015

Tonight I went out with the XT10i for the first time since coming home. I did get some observing done, but this was really a chance to get familiar with the new scope. For some reason this feels like the first time I've really put it through its paces...I guess because it's the first run-through of my usual routine.

When I was packing up the car, the OTA very nearly did not fit in the trunk -- I figured out a way to wiggle it in, but it's a very close thing. My assumption that it would be the same length as Ranger (the 8" SkyWatcher Dob, also 1200mm focal length) appears to be wrong. This is definitely going to take some practice. The rocker box fit in the back seat just fine, although I'm still nervous about the encoder boards. I don't know how I'm going to take a passenger (ie, my kids) plus this scope...good thing I've still got Neptune, the 8" Meade SCT.

I got to Boundary Bay a little after sunset, which gave me plenty of time to set up and wait for the mirror to cool down. Eventually Saturn was visible, so I had a look...gorgeous! Only 100x, and it was low in the sky, but it was still lovely to see.

Right around then, a couple of Delta police officers showed up. They were investigating a complaints that some duck hunters had been shooting over the dyke instead of over the water. They admired the scope, and when I invited them to take a look at Saturn they were quite impressed. One asked what the power on the eyepiece was; when I told him, he shook his head. "I trained as a sniper for the emergency response team," he said. "We had some cool scopes, but nothing with magnification like that!"

Finally it got dark enough to do the two-star alignment. I ran into trouble with this: no matter how much care I took, I kept getting truly whack warp factors: 17, 34...Finally I broke down and did the encoder test, and saw that the altitude encoder wasn't registering any change at all. I checked the encoder disk, and realized I'd neglected to tighten the tensioning knob on that side -- so when the scope moved in altitude, the disk didn't turn at all. That was easy enough to fix, and when I redid the alignment I got a warp factor of 0.2. Yess!

And now to test! First I went for Saturn, since it would be easy to verify it worked. Set the date, pushed...and right there in the 12mm. Hm, how about M13? Done. M11? Done. M16? Done. M22? Done. With all of these, it was right there -- no hunting around, no nothing. And that was pretty much the pattern for the rest of the night: even if it wasn't right in the centre (and most of the time it was), it was still in the FOV of the 12mm (and sometimes the 6mm, when I happened to have that in). There were a couple of exceptions: I tried viewing M4, but couldn't see anything -- it was super-low in the sky, though, so it's entirely possible it was behind a tree or something that I didn't notice. The other exception was M81; it took me to the right neighbourhood, but it was noticably off -- by which I mean outside the FOV, and it took a minute of hunting around to track it down. This was on the other side of the sky from the stars I picked for alignment, though (Altair and Arcturus), so I'm not too concerned about that.

By the time I was through all this, I was dancing around and high-fiving myself giddily -- I could not believe how well this was working. I took a moment to breathe deeply, then got to work actually looking at what I was seeing.

M28: A dim fuzzy blob, low on the horizon. A hint of resolution with averted vision that came and went. A new Messier!

M17 was obvious right away, even with twilight not yet over (it was only 9pm by this point) and without the O3 filter. With the O3 filter it was beautiful.

M23: At this point I switched away from my plan and just started paging through "Turn Left at Orion". This open cluster looked best in the 17mm eyepiece: enough magnification to darken the sky, enough FOV (68 deg AFOV == almost 1 degree true GOV) to show it off nicely. Two satellites passed through over in two minutes, going in opposite directions; I followed the second one for shits & giggles across a quarter of the sky, and the motion of the scope was just wonderful.

M25: Another satellite passed through while I was looking at this. I didn't record any other notes.

M8: the dark lane was easy to see, even without the O3 filter.

M20/M21: Very hard to spot the nebulosity in M20, even with the O3. M21 was very pretty.

M16: Finally spotted nebulosity with the O3 -- haven't been able to do this before with Ranger. Faint and better with averted vision, but definitely there.

M31: Went to see if I could spot M110, which I've had a super hard time with in the past. It was very faint, but it was there. Hurrah! M32 obvious as always.

Double cluster framed nicely by the 2" 32mm.

Upsilon Andromedae: Found with binos, then naked eye. Why this star? Two reasons: it's 43 or 44 light years away...and I'm 43 and a half. That's kind of neat. And it has four confirmed exoplanets -- discovered by Geoffrey Marcy, Paul Butler, Debra Fischer and a host of others.

Saturn nebula: Obviously non-stellar and squashed shape, but can't say I could distinguish much detail.

M15 Hint of resolution in 6mm.

By this time it was 10:30pm, and I decided to call it a night. Teardown was pretty simple except for fitting the scope into the trunk (again).

Post-mortem:

Alignment/push-to: OMG, it's amazing. Once I figured out the clutch problem, pretty much everything just worked. This changes EVERYTHING.

Motion; a lot, LOT better than my previous scope. I was able to follow things easily as they moved across the sky, even at 100X or 200X. I'm not sure if it's the handle that makes such a difference compared to Ranger, the heavier weight of the mirror, or just better materials...but man, no complaints at all.

Focuser: I've added Orion's dual-speed focuser. Travel is smooooooth like butter, and the two-speed adjustment is a dream.. The barrel extension is a bit of a pain when switching eyepieces.

Optics: Fine AFAICT. Things were fuzzy tonight with the 6mm (200x), but that may have been either because of clouds or because I'd been focusing on objects in lower third of the sky. Or maybe the eyepiece.

The session: You can tell I kinda went crazy; I was definitely drunk on power. :-) No, I didn't really stop to savour things (well, except for M11...man, that just gets better and better), but I was so very excited by how well everything worked.

What needs improving? A few things:

• I worry about the encoder disks and circuit boards. Some kind of cover for transport would be nice.

• The size and weight of this scope is significant. I can't get over the difference compared to the 8" Dob. Getting it in and out of the trunk is going to take practice.

• Someone suggested getting this holster for the hand controller, and I think that'd be a good idea. My father-in-law should be able to make something like this.

• I want to add a fan or two for the mirror and boundary layer. Not sure it's needed, but it'd be good.

• Haven't done a proper star test yet.

• Back still sore. I've got the new observing chair, so what the hell? Need to figure this out.

Very happy with this scope. Some improvements to be made, but overall well worth everything.