http://www.andysshotglass.com/Collimating.html

Sorry forgot to mention that.

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/howto/diy/3306876.html

Basically, you aim at a star and defocus is so that the star becomes a circle (which happens because of the central obstruction). If it isnt a circle, your telescope is not collimated and you use the knobs to collimate it till the image is circular.

Steve

I left Vancouver just before 8pm, the streets eerily quiet as everyone else was watching the overtime period of the second game of the Stanley Cup final. I got to Hope Slide about 9:30. By the time I had finished setting up the scope, it was dark enough that I could see Polaris to align my equatorial platform. I took occasional looks at Saturn as I waited for full dark and for the scope to cool. Seeing was bad. Bright stars were big, fuzzy, roiling balls when viewed through the scope. Saturn’s ring was doing the Wave as the planet bounced back and forth in the eyepiece. Porrima was its partner; the two were only 16 arc seconds apart last night and fit easily within the field of my eyepiece.

The slide is at the north end of a valley that runs roughly NNW to SSE. Saturn and Porrima were just above the ridge of the mountain to the southwest. The wind was fairly strong in the valley and probably much stronger above the ridge, which no doubt exaggerated the usual twilight air turbulence. I certainly could not make out the Cassini division, which I had just been able to do from Boundary Bay.

Viewing galaxies was another matter entirely. A bit of turbulence doesn’t much disturb the view of something that’s fuzzy to begin with and the skies at Hope Slide were _much_ darker than at Boundary Bay. I could see galaxies in the Virgo Cluster by 10:30pm, well before the end of astronomical twilight at around midnight. The views just got better from there.

Markarian’s chain was a delight. I saw for the first time why “The Eyes” have that name as we engaged in a staring contest through the eyepiece. I blinked first. The view wasn’t quite like the recent APOD photo, but it was still spectacular. M84 made a nice equilateral triangle with M86 and NGC4388, with NCG4377 clearly visible right in the centre of the triangle. I don’t remember whether I noticed IC3303 along one edge of the triangle. Galaxy after galaxy came into clear view as I made a sweep through the area. Sometimes I thought I could make out a dust lane.

I goofed up the alignment of the digital setting circles the second time I reset my tracking platform. I was getting tired by that point, so instead of realigning I decided to just visit some old friends. M57, the Ring Nebula, had climbed high in the sky. Though it was as lovely as ever, I still couldn’t make out the central star, which was no real surprise given that the air was still quite turbulent. Likely a side effect of the very short summer nights. I paid quick visits to the globulars M13, M3 and M71, with a side trip to the the Dumbbell Nebula (M27) since I was in the neighbourhood after M71. M27 looked a lot like this picture, except without the colour and the finer details. It appeared more like a milky eye than a dumbbell.

I moved from the Dumbbell to the Lagoon and Trifid nebulas, which had risen well above the horizon. For some reason, I couldn’t find the Swan and the Eagle nebulas. By then it was 2am and the sky was starting to brighten to the northeast. I decided to pack up and go home, putting an end to a very satisfying night.

I will definitely be observing again tonight. I’m tempted to go to Hope Slide; we’ll see whether I’m still that ambitious come evening.