| Observer: | Tom Campbell |
| Location: | College Station, Texas (Long: 96°17'W Lat: 30°37'N) |
| Telescope: | Obsession 20" f/5 Dobsonian |
| Weather: | The sky was mostly clear. Temperature was in the 60s (F) with a breeze that got a bit stronger as the evening progressed. |
Tonight was the monthly meeting of the Brazos Valley Astronomy Club. The plan was to take care of a few items of club business and then head outside to let everyone look through the club's new (to us) 20" Obsession.
As meeting time rolled around, clouds began to cover the entire sky. We teased each other a bit about who brought the clouds with them and proceeded with the regular business meeting.
After about half an hour, the meeting was over and we looked outside again. We were in luck - the clouds had cleared from most of the sky. The wind was gusting pretty hard, but we hoped that with the truss tube design, it wouldn't present too much of a problem for us.
At any rate, we all were anxious to take a peek through the big beast. We still don't have a good cart for it, so it took us a few minutes to get it through the door and outside into the field. But once set up, we were ready to get down to business.
Our first target was M57 before it sank too low in the sky. We cranked it up to 352X and it looked great. I wasn't able to detect the central star, but attributed that to the bad seeing conditions.
Next we turned to the Double Cluster. Someone had a 38mm widefield eyepiece (83X), so we put it in the focuser and took aim. The pair of clusters were still too large to completely fit in the field at this magnification, but you could see most of both of them at once. The number of visible stars was amazing, especially near the cores. A bright orange star right between the two clusters really stood out as well.
Then we turned to nearby NGC 457. A few of the club members had never seen it, and they were suitably impressed.
I then pointed the telescope to M15. Even with the 38mm eyepiece in, stars could be resolved completely across the middle. But when we popped in the 9mm (352X), the cluster filled the field and took my breath away. Glorious!
We spent quite a bit of time at each object in order to let everyone take a peek. We decided to try for one more before hauling the telescope back inside. Orion was just above the trees, so we took aim at M42. The nebula was thick and billowy and even with the 38mm, I could easily see 5 stars in the embedded Trapezium.
Reluctantly, we hauled the telescope back inside and called it a night. The 20" Obsession is a dream to use and I can't wait for the next time we're together.