You may think that I’m spending night after night observing with my dob. You are wrong, alas. Few days ago I decided to do some observations. But when I brought dob to my balcony, I found that focuser lacks bush with hold-down screw for eyepiece! So I brought dob back home and took my old bad SW 1309.
My main targets was M2, M15 (Peg), M31 (And) and M33 (Tri). However, I haven’t been able to find M2 and M15 with my binocular (!!!). Light pollution wasn’t that large (I saw Milky Way). M31 was inaccessible because it was too high, and balcony of above neighbors didn’t allow me to point telescope to this galaxy. But I could saw M33. I used 40mm eyepiece. It seemed to be only slightly brighter with SW 1309 than with 8×30 binocular.
At end of my observations I saw Pleiades, again with 40mm eyepiece. Very nice. That made my night. 🙂 Before I watched Pleiades with binocular only, but I had neither long-focus nor wide-angle eyepieces (I forgot to test my SWAN with Pleiades).
I also observed Jupiter with second-hand 6mm eyepieces, and I wasn’t satisfied: I saw cross-like glare; but this is probably because of poor quality of SW 1309.
But the worst news is that during summer months new lamps was installed on nearby building, very bright lamps. So I have to do something: find way to roof, or look for transportation, or something else… Of course, city observations are city observations, but it was much better yet last spring…
Tags: binocular, dob, light pollution, m33, pleiades
