Chatter Of The Squirrel

Astronomy: Alpha Centauri & the Southern Cross

Managed to spot the two front hooves of Centaurus, ie alpha and beta Centauri. Second baby-steps.

Managed to centre Alpha Centauri (or Rigil Kent), and swapped out the 27mm Plossl eyepiece for the 5mm Ramsden. That gave me (500mm / 5mm = ) 100x magnification. Of course, as expected, that looked like shit. The star no longer looked a star, just an elongated blur of light no matter how I focus.

Maybe I can justify purchasing a decent 10mm Plossl eyepiece. Sorry Kidd, more stuff for you to bring back for me

Wanted to get a closer view to see if the telescope could ’split’ the binary star. No success there. The 5mm Ramsden is really quite terrible.

So I’ve been doing a one day crash course in optics. There’s a lot of stuff out there, and prices on eBay can vary quite a bit. But on eBay you’ll find more generic (but still good) stuff from Celestron, Meade along with generic who-knows stuff from China.

I’ve found this website, Excelsis.com, has an impressive knowledgebase of eyepiece reviews!

Another interesting community is Cloudy Nights, where they also have a trading post for astronomy accessories. It’s also pretty useful to figure what’s good and what’s not by looking at what kind of equipment gets sold quickly.

At the moment, I’m getting very interested in University Optics. I think a good 5mm will be nice. Although I would like something with a wide field of view also.

Astronomy: Scorpius & First view of Antares

Skymaps are cool. Get one at skymaps.com

Rare clear skies tonight. These couple of weeks, the night skies has been a lousy orange soup from the haze and city lights.

Tonight it was quite clear. And despite living so near to One Utama, Ikea, The Curve and Cineleisure… I was still able to spot a few stars in the sky.

Took an hour, but I finally managed to get the sense of scale to read the sky map I printed out.

Managed to identify the tail of Scorpius, and point out Antares.

Using the Bushnell though… it’s impossible to know what I’m actually pointing at. No spotting scope. Image reversed and upside down. I was never able to be sure what I’m looking at. Needs more practice.

Also tried photographing the sky with my Tokina 500mm. Discovered that stars move really fast. Even a 5 second exposure and they start to trail.

Managed to point it at a random direction that’s rather populated, and squeezed off a photo.

No idea what constellation it is >.>

Astronomy: Bushnell Voyager

One night of stargazing at Port Dickson, made me remember Dan’s Astroscan review.

I had been fascinated by the stars since one memorable episode of Amigo and Friends, which Hanna Barberra dubbed from the Cantinflas Show. A Mexican made educational cartoon made in 1969… I had learnt so much from those cartoons. The story of Galileo, King Tut, the Colloseum, Atlantis, and many more. It was amazing.

It didn’t seem feasible to get an Astroscan since Edmunds Scientific doesn’t distribute their stuff outside of the States. It’s also pricier.

For a brief moment of insanity, I even considered building my own Dobsonian telescope. Mirrors are available… I’m even learning about the waning of Pyrex’s market share and the loss of their glass plant that was making some of the better quality 2″ glass plates used for telescope mirrors.

A popular alternative to the Astroscan in this price range is the Orion StarBlast 4.5 Astro Reflector Telescope.

But I ultimately settled on a Bushnell Voyager 100mm x 4.5″.

This is an Astroscan clone. But it uses a 4.5″ spherical mirror, which is generally regarded to be vastly inferior to the parabolic mirror in the Starblast and the Astroscan.

But the price is just too fantastic from Amazon. Only USD$114.95. The item is shipped from Adorama, which gives a lot of grief to international buyers, often rejecting non-US credit cards, even if you’re shipping the item to a US address. But buying it via their Amazon Store, and there’s less grief.

There’s a guy on the LowYat forums that provides a service, where he’s got an agent in Florida who’ll consolidate purchases and ship stuff over to Malaysia. This is especially useful when buying small items, or purchasing from eBay sellers or merchants who don’t ship internationally.

In a moment of insanity, I placed this order.

And 3 weeks later…

Ta DAAaaa….

The shipping came up to be more than the telescope itself. >_<

The beauty of it is that it’s ready to use right out of the box.

It comes with two eye-pieces, a 27mm Plossl and a 5mm.

The focal length of the telescope is 500mm, so when using it with the 5mm, you’ll get 100x magnification. (500mm / 5mm). But that’s kinda ridiculous cos even the Astroscan is sharp and useable up to 40x or 60x magnification at best.

Indeed, I found the 5mm eyepiece next to useless. It’ll show you a blur which is impossible to focus.

But the whole point of this starter telescope is that it’s very portable and fast set-up time.

Unfortunately, the night I got the telescope, the skies were cloudy and hazy.

Still, with the 27mm eyepiece, I could see clear into the carpark of One Utama from my window. Could even make out the carpark numbers. I even caught the signboard of the Damansara Fertility Clinic, and I’m not sure how far away that is.