20" up again

Yesterday evening I made a final push to complete the 20" overhaul (more on that later) and was able to observe with it last night.  As I suspected the new cell contact points pushed my focus out and I needed to use a barrel extender on my 8mm eyepiece.  The jury is still out whether the changes I made solve my astigmatism problems, but regardless I'm ready to push on to doing a super align and to implement the computer control.

Seeing was a middling 6/10 but did seem to improve later (as usual).  I turned to Jupiter first at 205x and was pleased to find Io's shadow transit in progress.  There were five purple festoons rising up like waves.  I used the planetary filter to cut the brightness and bring out some color.  The apodizing screen showed two diffraction Xs, one from the spider and one from the suspended fan, even though that is using guitar wire.  It's difficult to tell how it affects the view.  The 8" mask provided the tightest view; the moons shrank and it seemed all the same detail was there but I needed to study it a bit more to pull it out.

Moved on to some doubles, using 8" mask and 205x mostly.  I will probably end up using the mask most of the time; fortunately it presents nice airy disks so I can't complain:

STF 2022: Nice tight split, ~2".  Large delta mag.  At 8" noticed the B star with averted vision but could hold; the image was clean.  With 20" the B star was constant and bright but with more flaring.  Fine pair.
16h 12m 45.46s +26° 40' 14.0" P.A. 154 sep 2.2 mag 6.54,10.03 Sp F2V dist. 73.26 pc (238.97 l.y.)

STF 2029: Wide split, ~2 delta mag, pretty, faint pair.
16h 13m 47.82s +28° 43' 55.9" P.A. 188 sep 6.1 mag 7.95,9.62 Sp F4IV dist. 133.16 pc (434.37 l.y.)

STF 2049: Suspected elongation at 205x, split clean at 333x.  Blue B, dull white A, 1 delta mag. Nice!
16h 27m 54.63s +25° 59' 03.4" P.A. 195 sep 1.1 mag 7.33,8.10 Sp A2.5V dist. 132.8 pc (433.19 l.y.)

NGC 6210: Planetary nebula.  Faintly visible in 80mm finder.  Greyish, irregular oval patch in 8" at 333x, averted vision brightened it.  In 20" I see it steadily, mottled, with a greenish hue.  It is thicker in appearance with some brighter portions, with some extensions suggested on opposing corners.  No central star.  Loses color with OIII and the main portion shrinks in size, but now the extensions are brighter and there are less formed extensions on the two other "corners" of the oval.  

STF 2094: Wide separation, 1 delta mag, 333x [AC seen, missed the tight A pair 1")
16h 44m 10.57s +23° 31' 02.8" P.A. 312 sep 24.9 mag 7.48,11.70 Sp F5III dist. 156.49 pc (510.47 l.y.)

STF 2085: Interesting white and red stars, wide separation, 1 delta mag.
16h 42m 26.09s +21° 35' 34.3" P.A. 309 sep 6 mag 7.38,9.17 Sp A0IV dist. 190.48 pc (621.35 l.y.)

STF 2109: Well separated, around 2 delta mag.  Surprisingly interesting pair.
16h 53m 45.78s +21° 10' 22.6" P.A. 313 sep 5.9 mag 7.52,10.30 Sp K0 dist. 188.68 pc (615.47 l.y.)