High magnification zenith viewing
Here a spotting scope is being tested out on a binocular chair, in preparation for a nighttime tour. The observing area will be the entire region surrounding the zenith. This area of the sky is generally the darkest and clearest, where there is less effective atmospheric thickness, and less skyglow. The extra magnification of the spotting scope can be helpful for picking out smaller DSOs and galaxies.
Setup:
Beforehand, a couple of easy one-time coarse adjustments were made to accommodate the spotting scope on the bino-chair. Later when doing the actual observing at night, no coarse adjusting will be needed.
Operation:
After settling into the bino-chair, the spotting scope is brought into the best eye position, using the teeter and cradle. This eye positioning is maintained very well later when the chair is tilted fully back. The viewing elevation can be finely tuned with the teeter/cradle. For panning, the other hand lightly pushes the drive wheel. If both hands are released from the controls, the viewing direction remains steady.
At any time, the spotting scope can be shifted up out of the way, to look at the sky naked-eye or to use a sky chart app. The spotting scope can then naturally be returned down to find the same part of the sky.
When zooming in with the spotting scope, the sidereal motion of the stars becomes more apparent…. a little pressure on the azimuth and altitude controls keeps any target centered.
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