Io and Europa

dazcaz · Post by **dazcaz** » Mon Jan 16, 2012 11:26 pm

Great view of Jupiter tonight, and very nice to see Io and Europa right next to one another. At first, I though it was a reflection or similar in the eyepiece, but no, it was the two moons almost touching. Great to see.

Jupiter's bands were very nice. Well defined and great colour. Quite decent skies over Cardiff tonight.

Other views were Pleiades and the Orion Nebular.

This was just an hour or so of observing. Mainly it was a test of my new, 2nd hand, 4" Celestron refractor. I wanted to see how it compared to my other scopes.
This was the first real observing session with this scope and I am amazed by it. Not bad at all for 50 quid!!!!

David Frydman · Post by **David Frydman** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 9:36 am

Not bad at all.

Regards, David

I once got a Pentax 100mm f/12 complete refractor for £250.
It was in a Helsinki photo shop window for years on loan from the importer.
I asked the cost and was told it belonged to the Pentax importer.
I rang the importer and asked if I could buy it. He said make me an offer.
I offered a tenth of the retail cost and got it.
Unfortunately the shop was very angry to lose their window dressing, but the importer had written down the cost each year and was glad to get rid of it.
This telescope oozed quality and was utterly amazing
even at minus 20C to minus 25C.
Fortune favours the brave.

David Frydman · Post by **David Frydman** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 2:10 pm

Incidentally, with the fine Pentax eyepieces views were crisp with high contrast and very fine resolution.
At 300x with the 4mm Pentax eyepiece there was no breakdown at all in the image.
At 400x with a 3mm Clave eyepiece again the optics were still unaffected, any slight dergradation was due to the atmosphere.

It was the best commercial refractor I have used.
The observatory 135mm refractor was better but only because of the larger aperture.

Regards, David