Finally a chance to get out again. I received a 2" 28mm eyepiece for Christmas which will give me wide-angle views again, similar to what I was able to achieve with my old ST-80.
First thing noticed is how heavy the 28mm eyepiece is. Even if I push my AT102ED forward and connect the back-most edge of the dovetail rail to the mount, it is still lopsided enough to prevent the declination slow motion controls from operating correctly.
I'll have to take time to rebalance the whole-set to accommodate both my smaller eyepieces and this new larger eyepiece. I think if I slide the O-ring brace down the body of the scope closer to the focuser, this may give me enough leverage to balance the dovetail bar as needed.
Even though the balance was way off, I still took it out for a test drive. I bounced around the Orion Nebula complex, the Pleiades, the Hyades, NGC 2244 (one of my next targets), and the area around Elnath in Auriga.
For NGC 2244 I tested the usage of the Orion Ultrablock Filter with this eyepiece in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the surrounding Rosette nebula. The UB filter works best while below 10x zoom per 1-inch of aperture and for the last year I had been running it with my 13mm eye piece at 55x (a bit over this tolerance). With the 28mm I can run it at 26x which is comfortably within tolerance. In spite of this, the night was not dark enough to pull details out of the Rosette nebula. I spent 15 minutes trying to eek out details but all attempts fell flat.
All targets still looked beautiful. I had nearly forgotten the appeal of good wide-angle framing in some of these lovely areas of the night sky. I brought my art supplies out with me, but decided to simply enjoy the sights this time and let myself be mesmerized by the beauty.
text/geminiThis content has been proxied by September (ba2dc).