Spent my first day staring through the right end of a 4 inch apo from explore scientific. First impressions - I might be growing old, since
(a) I am not able to see enough stars clearly with my naked eye (of course I could also blame the light pollution around Bothell and spring back to my age's rescue ;)
(b) I see too many stars through the scope! Problem of plenty! Even the finder scope shows too many stars. Really seems daunting to even see the thing I am able to see with my naked eye!
(c) that stupid alt-az mount keeps wobbling, or my eyes are. Should be the former. Also, I need to constantly keep winding the knows sideways and updown. Gosh the earth moves fast! I cannot put in my 40mm eyepiece and simply chillax and soak-in the aura of the beehive cluster. Need to keep constantly fiddling around to keep the darned cluster in field of view.
(d) Stars seem to have rays of light emitting out of it, or do not seem to focus cleanly. Is it my astigmatism? Maybe. Is the collimation of the 3 objective lenses on my refractor slightly out of whack from the shipping? Maybe, though I couldn't observe any collimation issues from the instructions. But the beehive cluster at least seemed to focus cleanly.
Saw
1) castor - supposedly a system of 6 bluish stars. I saw only 1 star(?)
2) pollux - supposedly 1 yellowish-orange star. I saw 6ish blue stars?
3) regulus - supposedly another multi-star system with blue white dwarfs. I saw maybe 1 star with a blueish tinge?
4) M44 - behive cluster. supposedly an open cluster. Definitely saw 20-30 similar points of light/stars bunched into a single point of view through the 40mm lens. Felt like the awesomest thing!
Also saw a bunch of meteors through the 40mm! These were not visible to the naked eye! Was awesome to see these again! Reminded me of the walk from jalahalli village to the main road at grannies place in Bangalore when I was 5 or so - which is when I last remember seeing random meteors just by looking up at the night sky - back when there was no light pollution and everything was observable in the heavens via the naked eye. Including all the gazillion stars I had to see last night through a 4-inch apo.
Sigh, we age, don't we? But beehive cluster == awesome!!
(a) I am not able to see enough stars clearly with my naked eye (of course I could also blame the light pollution around Bothell and spring back to my age's rescue ;)
(b) I see too many stars through the scope! Problem of plenty! Even the finder scope shows too many stars. Really seems daunting to even see the thing I am able to see with my naked eye!
(c) that stupid alt-az mount keeps wobbling, or my eyes are. Should be the former. Also, I need to constantly keep winding the knows sideways and updown. Gosh the earth moves fast! I cannot put in my 40mm eyepiece and simply chillax and soak-in the aura of the beehive cluster. Need to keep constantly fiddling around to keep the darned cluster in field of view.
(d) Stars seem to have rays of light emitting out of it, or do not seem to focus cleanly. Is it my astigmatism? Maybe. Is the collimation of the 3 objective lenses on my refractor slightly out of whack from the shipping? Maybe, though I couldn't observe any collimation issues from the instructions. But the beehive cluster at least seemed to focus cleanly.
Saw
1) castor - supposedly a system of 6 bluish stars. I saw only 1 star(?)
2) pollux - supposedly 1 yellowish-orange star. I saw 6ish blue stars?
3) regulus - supposedly another multi-star system with blue white dwarfs. I saw maybe 1 star with a blueish tinge?
4) M44 - behive cluster. supposedly an open cluster. Definitely saw 20-30 similar points of light/stars bunched into a single point of view through the 40mm lens. Felt like the awesomest thing!
Also saw a bunch of meteors through the 40mm! These were not visible to the naked eye! Was awesome to see these again! Reminded me of the walk from jalahalli village to the main road at grannies place in Bangalore when I was 5 or so - which is when I last remember seeing random meteors just by looking up at the night sky - back when there was no light pollution and everything was observable in the heavens via the naked eye. Including all the gazillion stars I had to see last night through a 4-inch apo.
Sigh, we age, don't we? But beehive cluster == awesome!!
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