NASA is holding the post Flight Readiness Review press briefing for STS-130 and announced that the launch is targeted for 0439 EST on 7Feb10. This means that we should, weather permitting, have a chance to see the shuttle fly by NYC. If they launch as planned they will rendezvous and dock with ISS on flight day 3, 8-0 February 2010, in the early morning hours. The ISS has recently received an altitude boost and it it does not receive another before STS-130 launch, which looks unlikely given the recent boots, it does not look like we will have any pre docking dual visible passes. There is talk of extending the mission by a day if everything is going well to do some additional work on the urine recycling system so it is too early to speculate on post separation dual passes.
| Observing Location | Bryant Park | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Observational Period | 2015-2100 EST | ||||||||||||||||||
| Atmospheric Conditions |
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| Instruments | West Marine 7x50 Raiatea binocular and Galileoscope - Charlie | ||||||||||||||||||
| Observing Party | Charlie Ridgway |
First Light
Hand-held the Galileoscope is nearly useless. That wasn’t a surprise to me. It is just too long and has too small of an exit pupil to be able to keep it pointed at anything, even something as large as the Moon. When you do get it reasonably stable then you have to let go with one hand and try to focus with the push-pull focuser. But I did hold it still enough to get the Moon in close enough focus to tell that it was splotchy. I used both the Plossl and the Galilean eyepieces but did not attempt the Barlow. I found that there was a bright ring centered on the Moon about 1/6 degree in diameter that should not have been there. I don't know if that is from not being in focus or if it is because the object was too bright for the plastic eyepieces. With a tripod I think you will get credible lunar views with this scope.
First Light
I also tried out my new binocular. When I looked at the Moon I immediately noticed two red stars off to the right and one brighter red star to the left. The floodlights from the MetLife building across the street were washing out the sky and my view was restricted by trees and buildings so I had no idea where I was looking but checking in Planetarium I saw that the Moon was in Gemini between Castors ankle (ε Gem) and foot (μ Gem and η Gem) which are indicated as red stars. The binocular specs indicate a 6.6° field of view and ε Gem and μ Gem appeared to be very near the edges of the FoV and are 5.46° apart. The image appeared to be clear. I had some trouble focusing the left eye to set the diopter but I think that was due to the fact that I was hand holding the binocular and looking very high up (65.06 degrees). I could easily see the rays from Tycho and Aristarchus was chalky white. It looked like Grimaldi was in the terminator although Virtual Moon Atlas indicated that it is still in shadow. I stole a look at Mars and it definitely looked planetary.
When I sent to West Marine tonight to get the picture of my binocular I saw that they have a similar binocular with nearly identical specifications on sale for $20 less than the one they had at the boat show. The only difference is that my model has BaK-4 glass in the prism while the other one uses BaK-7 glass. So I had to go and find out what the difference is between BaK-4 and BaK-7 glass.
The two glasses are made from different metals (barium and borosilicate respectively). It appears BaK-7 glass transmits a little more light than BaK-4 glass but BaK-4 glass has less light falloff at the edges of the field and because the prism is more circular there is less distortion. So it looks like I got the better glass purely by accident.
