New Camera

I found a Logitech Quickcam Pro 4000 at a tag sale a while ago and bought it for $2. Last week I decided to remove the lens and attach a 1.25" nosepiece and try to image some Solar System targets.

Here are some results.

AR102 Update

I finally got to use the AR102 a couple times. Here are my thoughts so far:

• The Edmund Medium-Duty GEM and tripod, even when fully extended, are too short. The scope needs to be another foot off the ground for comfortable use.
• The included finder was wobbling so I threw it out. ES is sending me a new one soon. In the meantime I have put a Rigel Quickfinder on it.
• The included eyepiece and diagonal are junk. The 25mm eyepiece is constructed mostly of plastic and has a brittle eyecup; and the diagonal is plastic with a very cheap looking mirror. I replaced the diagonal with a Meade mirror diagonal. Unfortunately the Meade has issues with some eyepieces where it's hard to get them out. However it will be replaced in a few weeks with a nice Celestron prism diagonal.
• Chromatic aberration is minimal. Mars and most stars have no CA visible, Venus has a slight purple halo, and the Moon has a nearly monochrome fuzz around it that could be easily mistaken for dew on the lens.
• Image brightness is near that of my Super Space Conqueror. M42 shows a ton of structure.

Arrival of the AR102

Today my new scope, the Explore Scientific FirstLight AR102, arrived amid heavy rain and winds. It is a gift from a fellow Cloudynights member. I put it on my Edmund Medium-duty GEM/Astroview tripod that were given to me by another member of CN a few weeks ago. First light is later this week.

The Story of My First "Serious" Telescope

Quote from an Astromart ad for a Super Space Conqueror:

"You may have a 20" Obsession, you may have that 120mm Tak, and yet all that vastness of space feels so annoyingly unconquered. 

Even if at times you feel that you might have just about conquered space, have you done it in a manner that could honestly be described as 'Super'? 

Probably not. 

It's all about the equipment, or more specifically, the name of the equipment, and no one has yet to top 'Super Space Conqueror'."

I started my journey of amateur astronomy at the end of 2015 with a Celestron NexStar 4SE, a cute little computerized gizmo. The NexStar is a Mak, and a very good one at that. Visually it compares to my Meade ETX-90, which itself has identical optical quality to a Questar.

The NexStar in its first few months showed me a lot. In the solar system, it showed thousands of features on the Moon, the cloud belts of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, and the pinpoint Uranus. It is also big enough to pull in some deep-sky objects such as the Andromeda Galaxy, the Orion Nebula, and most of the other bright showpiece objects. I'm sure many people under dark skies would be happy with this as their only scope.

But after a while I got bored. Once you see the showpiece objects with a small scope, that's it - the little 95mm (Maksutovs are sold on the basis of the size of the corrector lens, but the primary is around 7mm smaller because the corrector scatters light a bit) primary mirror of the NexStar just isn't enough for real detail anyway - all galaxies are just smudges, M42's "wings" barely show up, globular clusters are barely resolved, and the planets are exciting for about 20 minutes. By April 2016 I knew I wanted a bigger scope.

As luck had it, I found optics and a focuser for a 6" f/8 Newtonian for sale on Cloudynights for $150 shipped. I convinced my dad that we could build a 6" Dob together and save some money compared to the price of a new one. He was convinced. Unfortunately my dad is not particularly good at woodworking so that project ended rather quickly.

By June, I was desperate. These optics were not going to sell for what I paid for them, so I searched around to find a solution, preferably a low-cost one. A guy had a Sovietski 6" f/8 with a spherical primary mirror, but that was too expensive. I looked at his other ads and found an Edmund Super Space Conqueror sans optics for $125 shipped. Thus, I have still saved money - an equatorial 6" costs $450, while a 6" Dob is $300.

I ordered it and waited. Unfortunately by the time it arrived I was about to go on a 2-week trip to Europe. By the time we got back school had started and I was in a new home-school program and wasn't ready for the stress of moving the primary mirror cell and installing the optics, so the scope sat around for a while.

The Super Space Conqueror is, truly, "super", at least in terms of size. This monster weighs 68 lbs and dwarfs ten-year-old children! Everything except for the setting circles and focuser knobs is made of metal. 

By December I was ready to finish the scope. My mom and I took it to a shop to have the holes drilled in the OTA, and I removed the mirrors from their original wooden cells and put them in the Edmund ones. The primary is attached to its cell via clips, and the secondary sits on its stalk, attached by ultra-strong double-sided tape.

My first target with my not-so-new scope was the Pleiades, mainly to align the finder. What a sight! There were way more stars in the cluster than with the NexStar. I have since seen many objects with this scope, and I hope I have it for a long time.

A Gloomy Forecast

Every amateur astronomer talks about "the Curse" of ordering new equipment. Supposedly, when an astronomer orders new equipment, conditions are poor for using it for a long time after.

They may just be right. When I got my ETX-90 last Stellafane, there were thunderstorms in the surrounding area, but somehow that evening it was only mostly cloudy - you could see some stars overhead for a minute and then they'd be gone. This was nature's way of taunting me, I suppose.

I have a 4" refractor coming within the next week or so, and tonight it's clear. Unfortunately when I opened my door I was greeted with this sight in my backyard:

That snow is 5 inches deep. No observing without a pair of boots.

It's supposed to get warmer this week, but with that warmth comes clouds. The weather forecast does not show clear skies until at least the weekend.

Oh well. When it's clear again I'm going to begin my Messier observing program.

The Celestron SkyMaster 15x70s - A Review

"I have been reading horror stories about these binoculars for months"

"The real working aperture is [smaller] due to the clipping of the light cone by the front prism aperture"

"They are a crap shoot, and you sort of have to get lucky to get a good pair"

Wouldn't these words dissuade you from buying a pair of binoculars?

They sure didn't for me, so for Christmas among other things I asked for the Celestron SkyMaster 15x70 binoculars. I chose them because they are:

• Just $55 on Amazon
• Large binoculars for the price of an okay eyepiece
• The cheapest 15x70s I could find

These binoculars are marketed under various other brands such as Barska and Orion, and I believe the Oberwerk 15x70s are very similar. The Celestrons were the cheapest, though. Celestron also makes 12x70s under the "Cometron" line but those were more expensive and I had a feeling I'd need a tripod for either anyway.

I figured that the worst case scenario was that they wouldn't work well and I could return them to Celestron and buy something else. Thankfully this didn't happen.

Boy, was I shocked when I opened the box on Christmas morning! These binos are huge!

(iPhone for scale)

The binoculars come in a very cheap pouch and include a cheap neck strap, a cheap cleaning cloth, and a plastic tripod adapter which is absolutely useless. The neck strap on my dad's $30 Celestron Cometron 7x50s is actually of a higher quality than the included neck strap, so I have since swapped the neck straps.

The focusing knob on these binoculars is large and rubber knurled. It gets a bit stiff in the cold but it works very well. The eyepiece cap is a single unit and is attached to the neck strap so it doesn't get lost, which is a nice feature. 

I was shocked to find Christmas night that I could indeed hand-hold these binoculars, at least for a short time. Keep in mind that I'm no bodybuilder! The shakiness is even more controlled if I sit down in my observing chair. I do notice that my heartbeat causes the binoculars to jiggle even if I rest my elbows on a chair and look straight at the horizon, which is probably an even bigger problem with higher magnification binoculars.

The chief complaint with these binoculars is that they often arrive out of collimation, and that the collimation adjustments are hidden under the rubber armor (which must be destroyed to access them). However I found no problems with mine.

M31 shows definite structure (though it was overhead when I observed it last and as such it was hard to tell) with at least 1 companion. The Double Cluster looks similar to how it does in my 4" Mak. The Pleiades and Hyades are remarkable in these binos, nearly filling the field. The Moon also looks rather nice in these binoculars, with no CA detectable.

Overall, pretty great binoculars. I would highly recommend borrowing some smaller binos first to make sure you can hold a pair of these steady, but if you can I wholeheartedly recommend ordering them. I use these regularly so you will definitely hear more about these.