Son Christopher recently got his drivers licence: "Class C, State of California" approved for the "privilege" for driving the state, county, and federal highways thereof...

So I had him drop me and the equipment off at the SCAC Bonny Dune observing site. As the sunset, Chris helped me set up the 80mm Pup, then departed for points west to follow the dusk into Santa Cruz - and watch fireworks along the beach.

Earlier that day, had found a decent - though not entirely elegant - means to mount the 80mm shorttube on Argo's Skyview Deluxe mount. Of course, checked with Argo first. Argo said "Fine, as long as you get me that Grand Polaris mount you've been promising me."

Well that GP is still a ways off, but at least for now I'd be able to use the Pup in grand style - smooth RA and Dec slewing. Solid images, unshakable during re-focusing, with sub 2 second shake down periods - even with the scope tilted at incongruous angles...

But adapting the Pup to the CG-4 equivalent wasn't the only "upgrade activity" of the day. I had replaced the flimsy cardboard used to "shim" the lens carriage with thin washers. My hope was that I wouldn't have to re-touch the collimation and get perfect image traversal "right out of the box."

Such hopes may easily be dashed by reality. That first view of a culminating Mars was enough to arouse the fires of my "optical indignation". Focus traversal showed 90 degree astigmatic elongation.

Shades of Crater Lake...

But this time I brought along a phillips screwdriver and went at it. Removed the washers, folded some business card cardboard. (Thanks Troy.) Hour later collimation was as good as it gets - by shimming...

Meanwhile, setup beside me was a newcomer to Bonny Dune bearing an Orion ShortTube 4.5 inch Newtonian. That scope too lacked collimation (at F4.5) and we used Mars (and later Altair) to clean up that scopes image traversal issues. (Though collimation was not "perfect" a laser collimator provided by club member Jack showed it to be as close as can be using such a "crude" device...)

Once both scopes were collimated we were off and at it. 4.5 inch fast newt versus 3 inch fast achromat. Mars looked equally poor in both scopes. (Mars won that battle.) The Pup resolved the Double Double at 120X, the 4.5 had a tough time at 200. Both scopes held the 12.3 mag star in M57 at 100 / 120x (respectively). Both scopes gave decent views of M22 (well resolved), M13 (partially resolved), M11 (fully resolved) and M27 (the Pup's smaller aperture gave better contrast due to darker background sky).

In general the two scopes gave comparable views. However the 4.5 inch did a better job of revealing the dark lane between M31 core and satellite galaxy M110 - aperture does have it's perks. In addition the Newt also was fully color corrected - while the Pup had a far flatter field of view with "pinpointy" stars - even at low magnifications.

No this wasn't the "showdown" expected between the 80mm Pup and Dan's 70mm Televue - but it was neat seeing two smaller aperture scopes in action...

Based on this brief and other comparos, I continue to re-iterate - if you don't mind a bit of false color on very bright objects, dollar for dollar, an achromat IS the way to go when considering scopes in the 100mm and smaller category. (Somewhere above 100mm and to 8 inches - "Get a Mak".

Speaking of Maks, two folks turned up bearing a 7 inch questar...

One impeccable scope. Only thing it lacked was a mount. Literally, the scope was mountless. The Questar is a new acquisition, and a mount is not currently available.

So when you used it, you lay down on a blanket and peered through the eyepiece (at less than knee level). Personally, I'd have stood on my head to look through a seven inch MCT -of any manufacture - but this was a QUESTAR. Image quality was every bit as good as Argo and about .6 magnitudes deeper! (Under less than ideal skies (5.5 ZULM) I was holding the 13.4 mag star in the ring easily and the 14.1 with slight aversion at 200x.)

Now I was blown away by two things unusual about the Questar 7 inch.

There is no finder (a very good thing considering there was no tripod to support the scope - only a yoke assembly.) The finder is part of the scope. You simply flip a lever and the FOV is now a low power finder field!

It has a built in barlowing system. Flip another lever and you get about a 2X boost. So the scope does about 10x, then 100X and finally 200x. (It was at 200x that I used to determine the scopes magnitudinal reach using the M57 deepfield.)

Since I was checking the deepfield I thought I'd have a look at the Ring itself. Exquisite! Slightly more contrast than Argo musters. Certainly presses any eight inch scope I've looked through.

Speaking of the Ring. It seems that everyone loves having me tell them "how deep their scopes will go". So took a look through Troy's 10 inch SCT (Meade LX-200 mounted). Easily held the 14.1 star direct. Swept my eyes around the field - and there it was - the central star! But only on eye movement. Was able to repeat the observation several times. Came as a complete surprise - wasn't even looking for it.

One other thing noticed through the 10 inch - there is a considerable amount of internal nebulosity within the ring. The average surface brightness of the interior must be very close to magnitude 15 - thus the additional difficulties of seeing the 15th magnitude central star... (It has a lot of luminous competition.)

But let's return to that 7 inch Mak - the Questar. The fine folks sporting this scope stuck around just long enough to watch an ascending Saturn. Looks through all other scopes (except SEC club president Dwight's 200mm) did little for this glorious vision of a planet.

But the 7 inch took the fullest advantage of whatever clarity there was - some 25 degrees above the western horizon...

A third "feature" of the Questar is the lack of user-accessible collimation adjustments. - But such adjustments would have been meaningless for this particular scope. Image focus traversal at 200x was impeccable. Outside focus a huge blurry but perfectly proportioned Saturn-ring system "football". Inside focus, a perfectly proportioned Saturn-ring system "football". At focus, a perfectly proportioned "slightly furry" Saturn-ring system "football". - The best any scope got last night (including a 67mm aperture-stopped 80mm Pup achromat)...

OK, for pure pleasure of image quality, sharpness, flat fields, dark background skies, and in anything under 100mm get an achromat. In the six to 8 inch range - Get A Mak!

Now unfortunately (for me), Dan (as mentioned earlier) didn't make the star party. Had he made it (and brought along that Televue Ranger) we would have had a nice small aperture achromat comparo - 67mm Pup vs 70mm Ranger. Had he made it (and brought along his Takahashi FS102 apochromat), there would have been absolutely no competition between the Tak and the 80mm Pup. Surely, Dan's Tak would once again prove that in the 100mm to 140mm range, the APO is king. - Sorry Friend Cor, let there be no doubt about it, APO's are monsters in this range. (In fact, at 102mm Dan's Tak has repeatedly done a fair job of hanging with 150mm MCT Argo on the occasions where we viewed together at Bonny Dune.)

Now with all the scope comparo stuff behind us let's talk about what I saw through the 80mm last night...

As mentioned Mars was a mess - and really didn't improve much (except for image focus traversal) once the Pup was collimated.

On the other end of the night (around 1:00 am), sky conditions low down prevented me from seeing more than two bands on Jupiter plus hints of Cassini on a better positioned Saturn.

So really, despite satisfactory overhead stability (7/10), not a planet kind of night...

Took a look at four "doubles" - Epsilon Lyrae, Pi Aquilae, Delta Cygni and (much later) Iota Cassiopeia. The Double Double just resolved, Delta showed a brightening to the southwest (and a spurious one to the southeast), Pi Aquilae displayed a nice tight "rod" of elongation. The 7 arc second Iota-C pair resolved nicely. All at 120x.

Inserting the (nominally 2x) shorty barlow, never saw thinline separation at all on Pi. Image quality just not fine enough. So no "Pi" for desert! Iota's 2.5 arc second pairing, was a tough catch - even at this magnification. But by the time it was high enough to view well - sky had gone from the "gauziness" prevalent throughout the evening to visibly striated with a thin and variagated "overcast".

Between sky dark (around 8:00pm) and that last view of Jupiter (some 15 degrees above the eastern horizon - around 1:00am), managed to do quite a bit of "stargazing". Started way down low with a severely tilted Sagittarian Teapot. Picked up a nicely resolved M22 at 80x. Moved over to view the Lagoon (with yummy "Strawberry Cluster"), Trifid (at 80x, resolved the ensconced double but no sign of the tighter companion which makes it a "Trifidium".) Netted the "Butterfly" Cluster, and scanned M24 Small Sagittarian Star Cloud (M24).

Skipped up to Scutum, where a sweetly resolved Wild Duck Cluster (winging south for the Winter, no doubt) was contemplated (still at 80x). Then on to the darker (but still "gauzy-looking") skies overhead. As usual, had a bit of a tough time turning up the Dumbbell Nebula (M27) - but was well rewarded with a fine view of the expected apple core shape replete with a nice range of varied surface luminosities. In fact, on eye movement caugh the coy scintillation of one or two embedded stars in the nebulosity itself...

About this time, Dwight began touring the Veil Complex, so with 35mm Ultrascopic and Ultrablock filter in hand, tripped on over and we proceeded to get the finest view of the Veil yet seen through an 8 inch instrument. All three components visible (at 60x with filter). Western Veil showed a thin stream of obvious luminescence (north of 52 Cygni). South of 52 the southern continuation could be picked out with little effort. The large moon-sized "smudge" of the Northern Veil was also seen but as a faint "texture" to the background sky. The high contrast Western Veil gave very "in you eye" views of numerous, rifts, folds, filaments and tendrils. (The very southern end of the "batleif" showed three west-pointing "rays" in particular suggestive of the letter "M".)

We removed the filter to test a theory that "reflection nebulae" are not particularly advantaged through use of an OIII / Hydrogen Alpha filter. The theory proved incorrect - at least in this one case. Removing the filter lost the "C-extension". We also had a tougher time distinguishing the brighter "C-region" from star haze...

I dropped the 35mm with filter into the Pup next. At 13x, the entire layout of the Veil Complex was suggested. Unfortunately, this was not a "scaled down" view of what was possible in the 8 inch. Even with filter in place, 13x admitted far too much background haze. So all we could see was an obvious Eastern and a much diminished Western Veil. What remained was "imaginosity".

Several times throughout the evening, turned the Pup on M31. As mentioned earlier, at low magnifications 13-16x, the eye could easily trace this huge sprawling spiral all the way to the edge of the field of view. M110 was also easily seen - even showing a good deal of central concentration. As in earlier reports, M32 could only be seen by specifically looking for a "small fuzzy star".

Further down the "observing line", new SCAC club menber Raul had set up another Orion "fast newt" - this time of the 8 inch suasion. Raul and I exchanged views of the Great Nebula through our scopes. In peering through the newt (at about 40x or so) I was immediately impressed with the exceptional presence of the main galaxy, its satellites, and the TWO obvious dark lanes between M31 core and M110. This experience, (along with previous views of various NGC galaxies through Dwight's 200mm Meade SCT), consolidated my personal belief that the road to galactic bliss begins at 8 inches.

Meanwhile, back at the 80mm, I scanned the M32-ward side of the main galaxy's spiral arm. In so doing could make out that small concentration of luminosity which could only be NGC206. Easy to imagine many a dark sky night sweeping the vistas of the main galaxy looking for hints of other such brightenings at low power using the Pup.

Didn't think to try and track down the more distant NGC147 and 185 in Cassiopeia. With Aries so high, wanted to use Hamal and Beta to "point the way" to Nu Pisci and M74.

Last SCAC star party, 150mm Argo and Dan's FS102 had been able to turn up this most diffcult of Messier studies. Nothing spectacular about the view at that time. Under this nights less transparent sky, simply wanted to be able "to find the thing".

As it turned out Galaxian Mark and friend were out wandering out among the scopes. For whatever reason, Mark had not brought either his 12 inch "Galaxy Buster" or his fine Televue TV85 apochromat. But I knew he was into galxies so the challenge gauntlet was thrown down to find M74. As it turned out, we got completely balled up in orienting around Nu, so it was only a few minutes AFTER Mark and friend had left the star party for good that I turned it up. And frankly - it was much brighter than the few "imaginosities" the three of us HAD found while scanning for it...

At that last star party, Dan's Tak had also given a nice view of M76 - "The Little Dumbbell" - in Perseus. So, looking through a somewhat gauzy - but not yet high thin cloud striated sky - I turned the double planetary up through the Pup. And no, the view was not the equal of the 4 inch apochromat. At 120X, the Little Dumbbell did in fact look like a little dumbbell - but unlike through the 4 incher - there was no sense of it being a "resolved planetary double".

By midnight son Christopher had returned with the car. (It was supposed to turn into a pumpkin if not back to the observing site by that time.)

Chris hung around patiently for the next hour or so as we waited for Jupiter to clear the trees to the west. Saturn never did settle down. As said, no edge focus and only hints of Cassini at 120x (even with the Pup stopped down to 67mm). Finally Jupiter cleared the treetop and revealed two fuzzy equatorial belts.

No it was not the best of nights, nor was it the worst. But it was a night, under the stars with equable company doing something most enjoyable and personally enlightening...

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