Doubles to celebrate the Winter Olympics 2002 Salt Lake City, USA A complete report by Bob Hogeveen

What a day and what an evening yesterday!
I have tried to sleep a bit last night, to be fit to produce a report that should stand up to the Olympic standard which is already so high after one day. But is was difficult, I was feeling restless and was full of thoughts.…

The loud and beautiful singing of a Songtrush woke me up again quite early. It was accompanied by hooting Collared doves and Wood pigeons, and twittering Great tits (Yes, these are also birds). It is spring over here, spring in our coldest month. The month in which we should have snow and ice, in which we should have our famous long distance skating tour, the "Elfstedentocht".

The spring was also noticable in the evening yesterday. It was 10°, I could observe without a coat (almost) and didn't need a cap on my somewhat temperature sensitive head (because of the lack of a natural cap...)

There was a very strong westerly wind. Besides the sheets to shield the light of streetlamps on my eastside, I needed a sheet to shield the wind from the westside, and I needed to fix it firmly!

My Olympic opening ceremony was a very special one. It was also the opening ceremony for my new Intes MK67!
First Light! Not after six weeks, but on the very evening I'm coming home with my new toy. That's hard to believe isn't it?

During the day I visited my home-town, Amsterdam. My present location is 200 km's from there (hardly enough to get out of the enormous light polluton...). I have to go there once in a while to visit my 86 year old mother who still lives in Amsterdam. This occasion I combined our trip with a visit to the telescope dealer to pick up an Intes MK67 + mount which I had already planned to buy. Why?. Well there was something slumbering in the back of my head for quite some time. I was thinking of getting a scope more suitable for traveling, I was thinking of getting a scope less sensitive to bad seeing, and I read a lot of good things of the MK67's.
Then I heard that my dealer had a shipment of MK67's in store and I sold my good old LX10 on impulse...

So, yesterday was the day.

While driving home in the evening I was surprised and getting very nervous! It was clear! How could that be? It should have been clouded and rainy for weeks, as it was this whole day actually!

But there they were, stars everywhere. Driving through the dark northern parts of Holland I could see stars all around, and even low above the horizon. Could this last for another few hours?

And it lasted.
It lasted about two hours after our arrival home. Enough to get First Light and to perform the Opening ceremony for my Olympics.
Of course the problems showed up immediately.

I hurried to get the scope and mount set up, knowing the weather over here and feeling the incoming clouds in my bones.
So hurry, hurry. Hey, why doesn't this counterweight slide onto the bar? @*!##&$@!! it doesn't fit. Why do these things always happen? Why didn't these fools gave me the right counterweight? The weight looks alright, but there is some sort of narrowing inside the hole, and there is no way of getting it onto the bar...
My first impulse was to get the scope out without the weight. I wanted to see stars with it! Having the scope in "upright" position, the only position in which it is somewhat in balance without a counterweight, I was able to do a first short observation of the Pleiades. And they looked good...
But what can one say of an observation with 60x (using the 30mm Ultima) and a scope that had not cooled down very much? Not much of course. So I needed to see more, AND I wanted to celebrate First Light with an Olympic double!. So I took the scope in again and improvised a counterweight with all sorts of junk taped and tied to the bar. Now ready for some real action...

Although having the Olympic doubles in mind I couldn't resist the sight of M42. And why not? It's THE skywonder of our northern skies and besides, it was closing in on the treetops! So I gave it the honour of First Balanced Light. And it looked good...

I only used the 30mm Ultima and it is difficult to remember the image of M42 in the LX10 for comparison, but the MK67 showed me a wonderful clear and bright image. A lot of nebula!. Another skywonder had to be honoured also: Jupiter.

One of the reasons for getting the MK67 was to obtain a good planetscope, less sensitive for seeing. And Jupiter looked good... Only using 120x (15mm LV) the image was bright but sharp and surprisingly steady. What about these strong winds? I know this kind of weather. No use of putting in high power EP's and the LX10 and the CG11 always show terrible unsteady images of Jupiter on these occasions. Well, the image of Jupiter with the MK67 was almost as good as I have seen it on the best occasions with the bigger scopes. Now I really need a real clear and steady night to see what this baby can do then...

Time for the Opening Ceremony!
38 Lyncis was chosen to carry the flag into the arena. This team was holding the flag with dignity and positioned itself in a very comfortable location high in the southern sky. It was easily found with the 10x50 finder. The finder of the MK67 gives a bright and sharp image (in most of the field) but has a restricted field of view. I would have preferred a 7x or 8x finder. Besides that the eyepiece of the finder has a too short eye-relief and I cannot oversee the whole field.
At 60x team 38 Lyn could not be split... But should I expect that with this large magnitude difference, this small distance and this turbulent sky? Putting in the 15mm LV got me 120x, and there it was. What a split, I didn't realize that 2.7" was so large at this magnification.

Did I put in my 7mm LV instead? While writing this report I start to doubt... But no, that cannot be, I had the EP's in their proper places in my case, and I didn't touch the 7mm... So the split was easy at 120x, but the image was very unsteady. Here I noticed the bad seeing, the star-image of the brighter star was mostly smeared out like I'm used to with bad seeing in my larger scopes. Checking out the DI afterwards I think it was not a bad performance of my new little observing companion. The DI is 93.91, and I'm fairly confident that the MK67 will take me beyond that value when the sky permits higher magnifications and more severe tests.
The captain of team 38 Lyncis wore a shining white suit this evening, how handsome! His companion, keeping somewhat shy to the background, looked a bit dingy, his (or hers? I couldn't make that out on this distance) suit needed a wash urgently. It had a dirty yellowish color. Nevertheless I gave this team a favourable judgement: 2 on the famous scale of the famous reporter R.H. from K. in the U.S.A.

Another team entered the arena but failed to perform up to Olympic standards...
It was Struve 1273, a team with a very comparable classification to that of team 38 Lyncis. But their starting position was far worse, they were sitting low in the sky, in the region where strong winds and thick layers of atmosphere are blocking the light-path.
They were disqualified after some serious attempts with the 15mm LV (120x).
The split failed...
Doing some research, as a selfrespecting reporter should do, I found out that this team had also performed badly in my CG11. Under the same unsteady sky-conditions they could only be split while using 280x and more. To learn this was a great comform to my little MK67..

Here are some technical details:
Date & Time: February 09 - 2002, 21.00 - 22.00
Location:  Annen, The Netherlands (53 N, 6 E)
Site classification:  Village-backyard
Conditions: Thin clouds now and then, strong winds
Limiting mag.: 4.5,
Temperature: 10° C
Telescope: Intes MK67
EP's: 30mm Ulima (60x), 15mm LV (120x)

Greetings: Bob
* I have put a picture of my Intes in the photo-section (scopes of members), watch the improvised (or should I say "Don't watch the improvised") counterweight...