It’s gonna get a little monotonous here, but I figure since I’ve posted all my other telescoping hijinx, I might as well keep up with that.
Saturday, we drove up to Anacortes to visit Anacortes Telescope & Wild Bird. I chatted with the owner of the store for a bit on what my equipment is, and asked him for recommendations for what I should do next. His first suggestion was to upgrade to 2" eyepieces, but that would cost me a pretty penny right now. I decided to wait on that, and followed his suggestion on a Tele Vue 32mm Plossl eyepiece, as well as some miscellaneous other parts to improve my scoping.
Since I bought a new eyepiece, I figured Saturday night would bring clouds. However, I stepped outside at about 8pm, and lo and behold, the stars were out. I quickly hauled all the telescope gear upstairs and set up on the deck. I aligned my finder, threw on the new eyepiece, and … Wow, the eyepiece is truly amazing when compared to the Meade Series 4000 eyepieces I’ve been using. I’m really about ready to put the 26mm, 15mm, and 9.7mm Plossls I have now on eBay to fund getting to 2" eyepieces. The problem is that these Meade eyepieces are going for about $25 each on eBay, which doesn’t get me near my goal. Why do I always end up with the expensive hobbies?
I spent a few hours with a friend on the porch staring at Saturn (Titan, Rhea, and Iapetus visible as well), Mars, M42, M45, and M35. Most of these I’ve looked at before, but I wanted to get a good comparison to previous eyepieces. M35, however, was new to my eyes. An amazing starfield, and conveniently easy to find when I looked at it – about 4° away from Mars.