The ragged rear end of a cold front moved through the area in the late afternoon, providing some clear skies. Transparency was still bad -- evidenced by the long vapor trail from jets shining silvery in reflected light pollution -- and seeing was no better. But it was a good night to use the 25x100 binoculars, which I haven't had out since the summer of 2015. There's a reason for that...
I spent some time this weekend adjusting the balance of the Peterson pipe mount I use, and had it working tolerably well -- so it was ready for me to use last night. I went out after dinner and started out with the Pleiades, of course. I focussed each eyepiece and the stars were nice and sharp; with better focus I could pick up fainter stars, and wishes of even fainter stars in the grainy dark. The Hyades were just clearing a neighbor's roof, so panned around there, and the Alpha Persei Cluster (Mellote 20). Found the Double Cluster after a bit of sweeping. Then to Mu Cephei, Herschel's Garnet Star, very beautiful reddish orange. In fact seeing so much color in stars is one of the great pleasures of binoculars. I was seeing steely blue, orange, yellows, reds -- like an autumn forest. The whole area of Cepheus is very rich.
The problem was I was standing and craning my neck, which was starting to hurt. I needed to take some breaks and look down at the ground to stretch my neck muscles. This is the drawback to binoculars. Looking with two eyes is nice an relaxing, but the neck strain makes extended viewing uncomfortable. I did use my lounge chair, but one is limited in movement -- unless one wants to study an object for a long stretch, it's annoying to have to get up and adjust the chair's position every few minutes. Even while lounging the mount is still shaky, and even when perfectly still bounces with my heartbeat, picking up on my body's movement with my pulse. This is why I'm so pleased with my 10-inch f3.8 Springsonian -- seated viewing with the same FOV, more light grasp, and better freedom of movement. I don't have two eyed viewing but I could always install a binoviewer. Perhaps I will end up selling these 25x100s.
I moved them over to Pegasus and found M15 straight away -- a ball of light with faint streamers coming out of it. I was impressed with myself. Next I tried Uranus, and while I didn't have a finder chart handy, I do think I saw it, a small faint bluish point, not a disk, in a string of stars.
After an hour of viewing the sky seemed to become hazy, with halos around the stars. The lenses had not dewed. I went inside and brought the binos with me to warm up. I came back out after 9pm, this time using my lounge chair exclusively.
Auriga was now cleared of the neighbor's roof, so I had a look at M38, M36, and M37. M37 was mostly unresolved, flower shaped; the stars seemed to really want to resolve but could not quite. I could see the bright red star in its center; and there were hints of the surrounding rich faint field which surrounds the cluster. The bright carbon star FU Aurigae was on the outer edge of this field, a wall flower next to its very attractive sister. M36 was loose but compact, and M38 was larger and lankier. I also enjoyed the chain of stars running to the south (which has a Mel designation I can't find now).
M42 in Orion was nice, especially when my eyes were better dark adapted. I could clearly see the dark nebula forming the fish's mouth, and the extended bright "wings" shooting out from the brightest part of the nebula. I could not see the Flame Nebula, but enjoyed the rich field of the belt stars, and the cluster Cr 39 surrounding Meissa, Orion's head star.
I ended the session just sweeping around, finding pretty fields and arrangements of stars to soak in. I'm looking forward to getting out under better skies.
I should mention I had the chance to fix the collimation on the 12.5-inch this weekend . Turns out the secondary spider was off center -- which is strange since when I installed the scope in the shed a year ago I re-did the collimation, including the spider. In any case the collimation looks good now. I discovered that where the Zlomotion altitude rod attaches to the front of the sonotube had bent the tube, nearly to being ripped out. I replaced the regular flat washers with a pair of metal door strike plates, which I had in my screw jar, which now sandwich the sonotube to provide strength. It should hold. I covered the shiny metal with black tape. This scope is really a kludge job!
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