(meteorobs) OT: Telescopes

Jan Verfl verfl.meteors at seznam.cz
Fri Mar 23 10:55:18 EDT 2007


Hi!

on our annual August starwatches we regularily observe "telescopic meteors"
- but the largest telescope anyone dares to use for that purpouse are the
old retired army 15x80 (or whatever around this size, nobody knows for sure
and the scopes differ from each other greatly) binoculars. There were times
when they used to be found lying with the waste, but their optical health
was poor - luckily enough, our observatory has some skilled technicians that
repared them. 

Even with such a small instrument (the FOV is maybe 5 degrees for the best
ones and they go to 10-11 mag easily under dark skies), you generaly see
much less meteors than with naked eye - and we tried it with bigger ones and
it gets worse rapidly, so i thing that looking in 12" scope for meteors
would be a great disappointment, even though it is a great choice for
anything else.

Anyway, it's an interesting experience to take binocular such as the ours
15x80 (necessarilly on a stable mount) and take some hours of observing - in
the rich nights of mid-August we can get say 5 or 10 shots per hour if we
watch carefully, but it takes time till you can draw them or whatever,
because even in 10x magnification, they are shockingly swift! Even more fun
is to have more people looking at the same area and sharing their
experience, if the meteor isn't a +4 mag blast of fire (+4 looks like a
fireball in the binocular) it's usually missed by a half of the group.

Clear skies,
Jan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: meteorobs-bounces at meteorobs.org 
> [mailto:meteorobs-bounces at meteorobs.org] On Behalf Of 
> meteorsga at bellsouth.net
> Sent: Friday, March 23, 2007 2:12 PM
> To: meteorobs at meteorobs.org
> Subject: (meteorobs) OT: Telescopes
> 
> It's OT time of year!
> 
> I'm considering (strongly) buying my first decent telescope 
> within the next month.  I had some experience using the 
> Celestron nexstar goto scopes last year, which sort of lit 
> the fire to own one myself.
> 
> But a bit of looking around has shown me that I could get 
> much better aperture for far less money if I forget the 
> computereized slewing functions and go with a dobsonian 
> mount.  Right now I'm considering a Celestron 12" dobsonian. 
> 
> My concern is portability (among other things).  The thing is 
> big.  Am I going to be able to easily (and safely) load and 
> carry such a beast out to my observing site(s)?  Is it going 
> to get jarred and unaligned riding back there in the bed of 
> the pickup?  Should I be looking at something else?  
> 
> Any and all responses would be appreciated in guiding me 
> towards buying the best scope.  My only caveat is I'm not 
> willing to attempt to build one...
> 
> Oh, and to get us back on topic, I'll probably try my hand at 
> telescopic meteors...
> 
> K. Youmans
> 
> 
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