First Light of the Millennium Telescope
Observational notes and intial testing
You've heard of Der Tag. Well, we've just had Der Nacht. The Night of First Light. Sunday 4th Oct 2009.
This is Christopher at the eyepiece with Ian as the azimuth drive. It's as precarious up there as it looks. Photo taken about 9pm.
It was fairly cloudy that night, but some observing was done. Ian saw first light on a star, but it was out of focus as the eyepiece still had to be adjusted to suit focal lengths. I managed to see another star, in focus, without my specs on, and using my short-sighted right eye. The star was in focus, reasonably sharp, but okay. The seeing wasn't very good, with the star at low elevation. Probably 1st magnitude star. Viewed many fainter stars, point images. The optics have only been collimated in daylight. Fine tuning still to be done at night.
The moon was next. It was viewed through the branches of a tree, through cloud, and I still got blinded. Lovely wide angle view of the Moon. Tycho, ejecta rays, all the big sea, all in the eyepiece. 50mm eyepiece at about x130 magnification. Great stuff.
Then onto Jupiter. Jupiter very low down, just clearing the trees. Very bright, 3 moons on the 'left', one on the 'right.' About 20 degrees high due south. x130 magnification, then x230. Belts seen on Jupiter, image very bright. Probably too bright to see any detail.
To follow objects in altitude, the tube was moved by hand. Smooth operation, and 'easy' to do, apart from doing it up in the air, in the dark, on the edge of a couple of planks.
The azimuth tracking had to be done from the ground, with many calls from on high of "left a bit, back a bit, too far, wrong way…" 2 1/2 tons of telescope being moved a fraction could be done to line up the image. The telescope was rock steady, with only the slightest detection of movement or vibration when deliberate thumping or walking was done. There should be no problem in use, provided observers keep reasonably still. I noticed a movement of about 1/10 diameter of Jupiter at x230 when C walked radially. This won't affect observing.
Looking forward to a clear night without a moon to swamp the images.
Andrew