The 2.4 inch Steinheil tabletop refractor I picked up off the "Bay" arrived on Thursday night in a ginormous 67 lb outer shipping box.

Some background on this scope: The Munich-based Steinheil optical company was once one of the premier German makers of scientific and communications instruments. Founded by the famed optician Karl August von Steinheil in the 1850s, the company specialized in a variety of advanced optical products including large telescope objectives and spectroscopes. Among his many achievements, Steinheil pioneered a new achromatic lens design that places the flint element on the front and the crown element in the rear of the objective. I believe this design was intended to produce a more aplanatic field and has been used most recently in the Takahashi FC series apochromats as well as by Zeiss and others. Steinheil also invented the super-monochromatic eyepiece. Steinheil Optical's heyday was in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the company delivered two of the world's largest refractor objectives: the 31.5-inch lens of the great Potsdammer Refraktor in Potsdam and the 28-inch Archenhold Grosser Refraktor near Berlin. For a time, Steinheil was the main rival to Zeiss, and the companies were constantly stealing opticians from one another. However, by the 1920s, the Zeiss companies had outmanuevered Steinheil and had achieved dominance in European optics. By 1930, with the death of Karl's son, Adolph, Steinheil was pretty much out of the telescope business. It survived WWII as a supplier of military optics and later became a well-known manufacturer of camera lenses until the 1960s. Apparently, they did resume selling small mail order telescopes after the war but these were discontinued by 1950. The sample I received is one such scope. Here's another, identical sample in Germany: Steinheil 2.4 inch

I wasn't prepared for how huge the wood box for this thing is. Happily everything arrived intact. By some wierd karmic circumstance, Thursday was one of the best observing nights we've had in long time here in the mid-Atlantic-- a rare combination of excellent seeing AND excellent transparency with temps in the low to mid 20s. In order to get the eyepiece end of this tabletop scope to a reasonable height, I "borrowed" one my wife's endtables and also jerry rigged a Televue 1.25" diagonal so that the Zteinheil could use modern eyepieces. The 60mm optical tube is heavy! I estimate its in the range of 12 -15 lbs. Like the Zeiss telementors, the Steinheil is ridiculously overbuilt with heavy-gauge metal components. Fortunately, the iron yoke alt-az mount has a very heavy base and holds the scope securely in place.

The first target was Mars rising in the east. As this scope has no finder, I popped in a 32mm plossl to get Mars in the field of view. Increasing the magnification, my satisfacton at the little scope's fine optics turned to delight. Popping in progressively shorter focal length UO orthos, I realized this was no ordinary 60mm refractor. Granted, this was no ordinary night, with seeing far better than we normally get this time of year, but this 60mm scope was delivering sharp, bright images of Mars at 216X with a 5mm HD ortho! It wasn't until I popped in the 4mm volcano top ortho for 270X that the image began to noticeably dim.
I wondered at that moment how long it had been since this old scope had seen starlight, much less Mars light near opposition? It had undoutedly seen some use at one time, but probably not anytime in the recent past.

Switching over to doubles, I first aimed at Castor. It showed elongation at 67X and was an easy split at 98x. My next double would be more challenging. Rigel is normally a split with 3 inch scopes. But the excellent seeing and the optics in the Steinheil revealed the dim secondary at 98X with an 11 mm Nagler. I doubt there will be many nights when I can repeat that!

Moving up to M42 and the trapezium, the Steinheil delivered a fantastic, contrasty image of the nebula, with the four trapezium components easily visible at 98x. Thanks to its long f/18 focal ratio and the unusually transparent and steady skies, the scope delivered one of my most memorable views of M42, with the entire nebula nicely framed by a 16mm Nagler.

The Steinheil is definitely a keeper and should be a great conversation piece at star parties. I plan on mounting it on a super polaris and using it for lunar, solar and double star observing. I would love to take it head-to-head against a Zeiss Telementor!

Observing Notes

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Took the 6 inch Jaegers refractor out to Sky Meadows for the National Air & Space Museum's monthly public astronomy program. Setup was relatively easy on the fenced-off field next to the main buildings. Conditions did not look promising during the evening as transparency was poor and seeing was mediocre. Temps were pleasant however with low humidity.

Public turnout was good. Sean O'Brien estimated that approximately 300 members of the public attended. We had about half a dozen NOVAC members with scopes. I was set up next to Alan Figgat and his TEC 140.

Just after setting up, I was interviewed by a Washington Post reporter who was there with a photographer doing a story on amateur astronomy. His questions struck me as somewhat random, but he was genuinely interested in the subject. I couldn't really tell what the angle of the story was going to be. He asked me about my equipment and whther i had read Star Names, Their Lore and Meaning" (I haven't). I mentioned the light pollution issue and how, for deep sky observing, local amateurs must travel progressivly farther from DC. I tried to downplay the equipment aspect but did explain the difference between a reflector and a refractor.

Around 7pm the public emerged from Sean's orientation lecture and began wandering toward our scopes. We briefly had Venus and Alan had Saturn -- both low in the west. The star of the show tonight was Jupiter in the southeast. Despite mediocre seeing, Jupiter was showing a fair amount of detail at 136X with the 11 mm Nagler. The low power view framed Jupiter nicely with 3 of its moons visible. The kids were well behaved and some were very observant at the eyepiece.

Around 9pm Europa emerged from its transit and became visible as a "wart" on Jupiter's limb. Folks got a real kick out of that. Later in the evening, one of Sean's crew announced that an iridium flare was about to occur. About 15 minutes later, the flare erupted over the northeast at about mag -4. That produced lots of oohs and ahs. Several run-of-the-mill satellites were also seen.

The sky cleared up nicely by 10 pm, affording a pretty impressive view of the Milky Way. - perhaps the best Milky Way I've seen from a "close in" observing location. Unfortunately, just as things were getting interesting, the public was unceremoniously kicked out at 11 pm. I split the rest of my time between the Jaegers and NOVAC member Paul's 14 inch Meade SCT mounted on a CGE. I enrouraged him to look for several planeteries around Cygnus, but he had some difficulty finding them because his Goto alignment was a bit off. Returning to the Jaegers, I observed a few NGC objects in the vicinity of M11. I packed up around 1:30 and was the next-to-last to leave. An enjoyable night. I'd hope to make the Sky Meadows monthly public observing nights a regular outing.

Observing Notes

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Saturday Camp Highroad Equipment: 12.5 Starmaster Dob

Telrad is dead. Had to navigate via wide-field eyepiece until Greg Piepol kindly lent me a replaceent battery for the Telrad.

* M28 - intially mistook it for M22. An impressive globular of its own accord
* NGC 6638 - globular in same field as Lambda Sagittari
* M22 - huge! Twice as large as M28. Gorgeous. Nice range of star colors with some orange giants visible. There appears to e a dark nebula traversing one of the corners.
* NGC 6642 - small globular near M22. Outer stars beging to resolve with 6mm ortho.
* Star Cloud - M24 - Huge. Beautiful strings of stars.
* M17 - looks great with 16 Nagler and broadband filter.
* M71- Globular in Sagitta.
* M27 - spectacular in 11mm Nagler! Mottling visible with OIII filter
* Uranus - found after much effort. Less green than I remmeber it.
* M31/M32/M110 - huge - M110 is well outside my widest fov
* M33 - core visible in the east. Not too impressive yet.
* M15 - easily resolved, compact

Observing Notes

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Thursday Camp Highroad, Aldie, VA Trans. 8, Seeing: 5 Cool, clear night
Equipment: Starmaster 12.5 inch Dobsonian

Tried using Paracorr on the Dob but it doesn't reach focus. Telescope in need of collimation - diffraction pattterns asymmetrical on either side of focus.
easiy visible.

* M4- Scorpius - Big sprawling globular almost looks like and open cluster. - easily resolvable with 32mm and 16mm eyepieces.

* K3 2003 Linear seen through Alan Figgat's TEC 140

* Q4 NEAT in Ursa Major - easy to spot in 32mm eyepiece. Off-center cone with sligt flaring away from sun

* M13 - on meridian - nice star chains - beautiful view with 11mm Nagler.
* M51 - Spiral arms easily vsible. Great view with 11mm.
* M80 - Scorpius. Outer stars rsolve with 9mmm ortho.
* M62 and M19: Scorpius - small bright compact globulars.
* M57- Good view near zenith.
* M22 - spectacular with 16mm
* M28 - bright rund globular in Sag.
* M8 and NGC6530
* M17 - Omega Nebula - spectacular!
Wrapped up around 12:45 am

Observing Notes

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Friday Camp Highroad, Aldie, VA Trans: 8, Seeing: 8
Equipment: Oberwerks 15 x 70 binoculars

Forgot to bring the truss tubes for the Starmaster, so all observations were made with Oberwerks 15x70 binoculars on a bogen 3021 tripod. Conditions were mostly cloudy with smal breaks till 11:15pm, when the sky cleared up, allowing the following observations to be made:

* M3 - globular Bootis
* M13 - globular Hercules
* M4 globular , Scorpio

Observed several objects through Bob Traube's C11.

By midnight, Sagittarius was high enough for observation. The Milky Way was easy to see between Sagittarius and Cygnus, but was not "crisp."

Made the following Messier observations in Sagittarius with the 15x70s:
* M8 Lagoon Nebula - large and bright.
* M20 Trifid Nebula - large and bright.
* M22 - globular - large and bright
* M28 - globular - bright
* M24- Sagittarius Star Cloud - huge!
* M17 - Swan Nebula - bright, compact
* M16 - bright, large
* M18 - open cluster - small and bright
* M23 - open cluster - large , faint and unresolved. Has a prominent star just to the west of it.
* M25 - coarse open cluster to the west of M24
* M7 - large, coarse open cluster
* M54 - globular, faint and small.
* M70 - globuar, faint and small
* M69 - globular, faint and small

* M26 - large unresolved open cluster
M11 - Wild Duck Cluster - open cluster looks like a globular in binoculars
Packed up at 2:15 am.

Observing Notes

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