Earlier this month I had the opportunity to do some observing in the southern hemisphere. I've been there a few times (though not in quite a few years), but I've never brought my own telescope, so I've never been able to really explore southern skies so to speak.
This trip was to visit my wife's family, but fortunately, we planned to spend some time outside the cities to do some sightseeing. As a result, I thought I would be able to get at least a little time under somewhat dark skies. So, I decided to bring my Stellarvue SV102ABV (102mm f/8 doublet apo refractor).
Interestingly, this telescope turned 20 years old shortly before we left on this trip. I bought this scope in June of 2023 at the Rocky Mountain Star Stare in Colorado from Vic Maris of Stellarvue. The story behind that is that he had decided to visit the star party as a side trip and would bring a few demo scopes, but to save space, he asked on the Stellarvue user's forum if anyone was going and could they bring spare mounts for the demo scopes. A few of us on the forum volunteered and I ended up with this 102mm doublet apo refractor sitting on a mount that I had brought. I ended up using the scope a fair amount at the star party and really loved it. My only refactor at the time was a small grab and go 80mm Stellarvue achromat (the SV AT1010) and the views in the apo refractor were stunning. At the end of the star party, as everyone was packing up, Vic came over and asked me "You're not going to make me ship that back to California are you?" I got my checkbook out and the scope has been with me ever since. Modern apo triplets use more advanced optical designs, but this doublet uses a (rare for the time) non-standard secondary glass which gave much better correction and it holds up quite well for visual and photographic work. It helps that it has a relatively long focal ratio of f/8.
The feature of this scope which made me choose to bring it is that the tube separates in to two sections. This was done so that it could accomodate binoviewer use without a barlow lens, but turns out to be convenient for travel as it makes it compatible with carry on dimensions. I packed the telescope OTA in one of those rolling carry on cases for airline travel with some clothes around it for padding, tucked a few eyepieces in there and I was good to go. For the mount, I purchased a Stellarvue M2C mount head and packed that in a checked bag with a medium weight photo tripod to hold it.
The first part of our trip we would be spending time in the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney. This was shortly after the new moon, so there was a bit of dark time at the beginning of the night. Unfortunately, the place where we were staying was heavily forested, so there was no option for viewing from there. Between a few clouds and the time zone shift, I did not try any observing from there and did my observing during the last part of the trip, right around new moon, when we were in the rural areas outside of Brisbane. Looking at the light pollution maps, we would not be in a truly dark sky, but as we were situated South and West of Brisbane (and West of the Gold Coast), most of the light domes would be away from the area due south which is what I wanted to explore.
In preparation for the trip, I used Sky Safari to generate an observing list of possible targets. Given my tropical latitude at home, I was really only interested in things very far south. I figured anything I could see from home even at low elevation would look as good given the darker skies here than it would in the moderate light pollution I expected at the observing sites in Australia, so the list only contained objects at declination of -40 or further South. Given the small scope, and moderate light pollution, I also limited the list to magnitudes of 10 or brighter. After some curation, I ended up with a list of about 70 objects. I didn't expect to get all of them as some would not be very high in the evenings, but it would give me something to pick from.
I managed 4 observing sessions, each quite short (1-2 hours). I did three in the early evenings, but on our last night, I got up an hour before twilight began to get some of the objects I could not reach in the evening.
The highlights were, of course, the Magellanic Clouds and the objects in and around them. The SMC was huge, more than filling the 2.9 degree field of view in the 35mm Panoptic I brought for wide fields. The SMC has several clusters and nebulae within in which were visible as a patchiness in the low power view. Scanning around the SMC, one quickly comes across the 47 Tuc globular cluster. The highest practical power I could use (given the lightweight tripod I was using) was about 100x with the Baader Zoom at 8mm. At that power, there was plenty of resolution and detail down to the core. This globular is spectacular -- it is of a class with M13 and M22, clearly surpassed only by Omega Centauri. Also in the SMC, I noted three other distinct bright objects: NGC 330 (an open cluster), 346 (a bright nebula which was dramatic), and 362 (another globular).
The LMC was very low in the evenings, though still visible to the naked eye once dark adapted, so I left detailed observations of it to the last night when I got up in the early morning when it would be transiting. Instead I moved on to various other objects which were not part of the Magellanic Clouds. A few highlights included NGC 6744, a large spiral galaxy. Diffuse and low surface brightness, I could see the bright core and large faint halo/disk. I'm guessing this would be spectacular from properly dark skies with a chance to reveal spiral arms in a mid-size scope. There were a number of excellent globulars including NGC 6752, NGC 6397, and NGC 6541.
On the last night, with the LMC transiting in the pre-dawn hours, I was able to explore this rich region. As with the SMC, one could just scan around the LMC at low power in the 35mm Pan and see lots of different things. A quick glance would reveal objects as "patchiness" in the LMC, but zooming in on each would reveal either an open cluster, nebula, or globular. A few highlights included NGC 1763, a nebula complex in the arms of the LMC. NGC 2014 which was compact at low power, but resolved in to a neighboring nebula and open cluster. And, of course, NGC 2070, the Tarantula Nebula. This is a bright nebula which, despite the light pollution, revealed some arc-like structures at ~100x with the 8mm Baader Zoom. I'd seen this object from home technically, but it barely rises above the southern horizon here. I've taken a few images of it with the horizon in the frame just for fun.
Finally, I hit the Carina Nebula. This is also something I'd seen from home (at somewhat more reasonable elevation as it is 9 degrees further North than the Tarantula Nebula). Again, there was lots of structure visible in the nebula despite the light pollution. This was another object ideally suited to exploring with the wide field of the 35mm Pan.
Between the four short observing sessions, I recorded observations of about 35 objects (which included a few I could see from home). This was pretty complete coverage of my list given the RA ranges I had access to and the light pollution to the East (from Gold Coast) limiting views in that direction. I was quite lucky that the south polar region was at least somewhat away from the light domes and that I had a horizon window open in that direction. Trees obstructed some of the objects West of the pole, but I was able to move around and get most things on my list which were at reasonable elevation thanks to the lightweight setup with the 102ABV.
This was my first experience traveling with a scope and it turned out well. It was not without problems (I accidentally left my DSC box at home, so had to find everything with some old school star hopping), but the telescope and mount worked great.