Well, the scope certainly got over its sulks tonight.



Because of a not very propitious start (couldn't find the red

cellophane to cover the torch, spent half an hour finding the

Hartung's book, broke an ornament in the living room while

hurriedly packing up, all the nicads were in toys and were dead

flat so I had to buy AA batteries for the led desklamp on the way,

didn't have enough time to read up on what was visible so grabbed

the laptop from the workshop only to find its battery was flat,

wasn't certain that the latest attempt at collimating the scope was

any good), when I arrived at the club's viewing site an hour late I

plonked myself in my chair and announced loudly that I was Having A

Beer before unpacking *anything*.



Things picked up after that, though (at least after the laptop

emitted its last dying beep). The collimation was near perfect, the

high power eyepiece (7mm, approx 200x) worked very well. Dark

features on Mars were easily visible once it was high enough to be

out of the turbulence, and some people said they could just see an

icecap. The two intersecting lobes of the mag~10.5 colliding

galaxies NGC4038-39 in Corvus were easily seen, although the

"antennae" will need a darker sky or a camera. The highlight,

though, was Eta Carina. The low power eyepiece (25mm, approx 50x)

showed the star as vaguely asymmetrical. The 7mm eyepiece (which I

hadn't used on Eta before) showed intricate detail in the

tiny Homunculus nebula and contrasts in the surrounding nebula that

got oohs and wows from even the experienced people.



A quick and casual sweep through Virgo/ComaB (which this scope

hasn't seen before) found around twenty galaxies, including six in

one 50 arcminute field of view. There's just gotta be intelligent

life out there somewhere. ("cos there's bugger all down here on

Earth"...)



Definitely a desulked scope.



--- PPoint 1.88