Posts Made By: Ron Bee

Hello there Darren,

Try more magnfication on M13, say 150x-200x and remember to use averted vision. You might be pleasantly surprised. Also, dark skies (without the moon ;-) makes a big difference in resolving M13.

Ron B[ee]

Hi Sol,

I'd be very interested in know how the "Mars filter" compared with color filters. Will it show more or enhanced details not visible with #21, #23, #25, #80A, #38, #56 filters. In other words, will there be benefit from using this new filter over the color filters?

Thanks,
Ron B[ee]

Well, Robert that depends on the magnification you seeing would allow on Mars. Does the seeing support your 8mm Plossl currently? If so the 8mm Radian would be a good start, followed by the 6mm Radian.

Ron B[ee]

Mike provided a good one used by many double star observers. Here's another one.
http://webspace.oanet.com/dfell/astro_seeing.htm
I would note that this is not the Antonaidi scale. I also do not how well the minimum aperture really correlates, but it's nice to have someone at least try to.

Ron B[ee]

I guess it's not how or where you pick it up the info as I guess we've all been picking up knowledge since kindergarten, Mike, but how well you present the info (which I thought you did put forth very well indeed)!

Ron B[ee]

What was your ETX (ETX70, ETX90, ETX125?), Derek? What is your portability requirement?

I don't know who the fella was and don't know what he meant. But if he meant DSOs, I was in the city just a couple of week ago with my 8" Dobs looking for M51 under lots of light pollution. The view through my 8" Dob from the middle of the city was worse than my 4" TV-102 from my fairly dark backyard. So the 4-incher would fare far worse in the city! All I could see was the two bright cores :-(! Needless to say, M51 was even better through my 8" Dob from my backyard than my 4" TV-102.

Thanks,
Ron B[ee]

Wow, Angel, that's a fantastic photo! You were so lucky to have seen the occulation! Have you considered sending the photo in to S&T magazine?

Ron B[ee]

Thank you very much Sol. That was very illuminating!

Ron B[ee]

Hello there David,

I'm very glad your TV-102 works well for you. I'm wishing you a really good seeing soon. With good seeing, the TV-102 will be able operate at the limit of its 4-incher capabilites. Please have a peek at what sort of Martians may await you with your TV-102 ;-).
http://members.cox.net/ronby/Solar-System/index.htm
Do use color filters because Mars is quite bright and cause a lot of glare now that it's getting so close to us. I hope this link would be helpful.
http://members.cox.net/ronby/Mars-HOWTO.htm
When the seeing is good, you'll need more magnification than the 6mm can provide (perhaps, a high quality barlow or powermate or perhaps more eyepieces ;-).

As for the finder, if I maybe so bold as to suggest the Tele Vue Starbeam ;-)? Sounds like you might be able to make use of an small GEM mount such as a Vixen GP or an older Vixen SP (like what I have) with an RA drive ;-).

Lastly, I'd like to invite you to join our fun-filled, knowledge sharing Tele Vue eGroup.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TeleVue/
Congratulation on your fine acquisition and heirloom piece that will last a life-time!

Ron the 4-inch Tall Evangelist B[ee]

Hello there Steve,

Well, though I'm a newbie/tyro, I have spent a great deal of time with galaxies through the same light cup as yours, the TV-102 ;-). My sky sounds like it's darker than yours (between LM=5.5 - 6.0). A better metric to determine how dark (or bright :-() your sky is, is to see what's your naked eye limiting magnitude near the object you want to see, rather using the Milky Way. There are widely varying degree of light pollutions ;-).

Having said this, I can see M101 just fine from my backyard during moonless nights when it's near the zenith. But I don't see any spiral of course :-(. M101 is very large and thus have a low surface brightness. Thus, surface brightness is one of the key factor whether you'll see the galaxy or not. Galaxies that have bright core and/or high surface brightness is much easier to detect and/or see.

Having said this, it all depends on the galaxy and the type of galaxy (core vs coreless like a dwarf). I don't have experience viewing from light polluted city (except M51 ;-) but I would estimate that aperture will definitely help under this condition. However, with coreless galaxy like the dwarf having very low surface brightness like Barnard's Galaxy (NGC 6822), I'm guessing that even very large aperture will have problem with this one in the middle of the city. In order to see this type of galaxies, you need *contrast*. Because the sky background looks gray (some says orange ;-) under polluted sky and the galaxy itself looks gray, there may not be enough contrast in the city regardless of aperture! Incidentally, I couldn't see this galaxy from my backyard either, but it was quite easy under a really dark mountain sky (LM=6.5 that night) with my 4" TV-102 Light Cup at low power. Perhaps, the guys with the 12.5", 15", 16"-20" light bucket can provide objective inputs as to the visibility of the coreless and/or low surface brightness galaxies from the city.

One last example, a fellow I know could never see M51 through his TV-85 under his LM=2-3 city sky, horrible I know :-(. After he got his 12.5" Portaball, he had no problem seeing it ;-), albeit not spectacular by any mean.

Oh, I like to add that you may wish to prose your question on SAA as well as Tony Flanders participates there. He has a great deal of experience observing DSOs from the city with various apertures. Here's his web site also.
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze55p46/index.html

Good luck on your quest. Personally for me, it's good to have one small scope like our TV-102 and one large scope. One thing you might want to think about. Galaxies always look better under dark skies; so portability may still be a factor if you want to astro-commute with it.

Ron B[ee]