[Friends_of_SSASTROS] Notes From The Field - Post Meeting Observing

[Mike McCabe]

Greetings Members and Friends of the SSAS,
After a wonderful presentation by Barry on all things Solar System, several of us repaired to the field for a little post-meeting observing. Everyone who came got the chance to check out the Webb's Wreath asterism in Hercules, and everyone seemed to deem it a worthy target. For those interested in the details, we were using a 10" F/5 Newt/Dob with a 12mm eyepiece installed for a medium power of 104x.
Once we'd had our fill of the Wreath, we then turned our attention to the planet Saturn. In spite of some issues with the Dobsonian base*, we pushed the power up to 250x and everyone seemed to enjoy a splendid view of the ringed gas-giant and a few of its moons.

The moons were ordered distinctly differently last night from what I had seen on Sunday night, and although most of us aging critters occupying the court last night saw just Titan, Tethys and Dione to the right of the planet as seen on the eyepiece, I believe Nick's young eyes pulled Rhea out of the glare right next to the globe of the gas ball. Iapetus was also easily visible, but Saturn needed to be moved out of the field to see it.
We also enjoyed passing around Vern's 7x50 binoculars, gazing variously at miscellaneous asterisms and clusters throughout the sky. By 9:30 we'd had our fill of astronomy for the day, so we burned rubber toward our homes and called it a night.
Today, as some of you may be aware, the Sun, the structure of which was so eloquently presented to us at the meeting last night, responded today with the strongest flare yet for Solar Cycle 25. So, more auroras, possibly like discussed in Ed's image also last night, could be in the offing within a few days.

It's a fun time to be looking at the Sun. Right now, ol' Sol is gearing up for Halloween, and is thus sporting an amazing carved-pumpkin look, with a winking eye, toothy grin and all. The big flare came from the left-most grouping in the 'smile'.
Keep Looking Up!
Mike M.
* You may think that the Dobsonian telescope base, as simple as it is, can't be screwed up. But that's not true. Indeed, all you have to do is try just a little and do something stupid to it, and viola, it works like crapola. Our issue last night while trying to follow Saturn @ 250x came from a little thing call 'stiction'. Stiction is a term that describes the effort necessary to overcome the initial friction between two moving parts. When the stiction is too high, more effort is necessary to make things move, and it often results in the initial movement being more than what was desired. 
The stiction problem is quite common on older Chinese-issue dob mounts. Cheap and essentially incompatible materials (like smooth laminate and nylon bearings as opposed to textured laminate and Teflon bearings) often wind up becoming effectively glued together and very frustrating to use.
One common way to deal with the stiction issue is to remove the ground board from the rocker box and lay on a coating of car wax where the parts mate. Yesterday, thinking that I'd shortcut that process, I confidently grabbed a can of Silicone Spray and gave the parts a good squirt. Yeah, that didn't work.
Today it came apart, off came the silicone and on went the wax. All is well once again.  

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