SOLD my PENTAX 105SDHF telescope

...to an old friend who has much more time and resources to maximise the 4-inch potential.

I am glad it found good hands to continue its journey to capture more starlight.

I still have two more telescopes, a Vixen tracking system, and an awesome GPDX mount to play with; except that I haven't touched my precious equipment in years (oh, forgive me for going dark) because excuses, excuses - I was too lazy. I still am.

These continue to be preserved in the dry cabinet.
Life is still good. I have Hope that is in mint condition.

Camp Polaris & Camp Vega

"SkySensor units on both sides, we pretty much covered the entire universe that night. It made the stars so accessible to the campers. Star clusters were plentiful, as were the number of galaxies. Faint structures could be discerned to the keener eyes, and with seasoned averted visions. The good news then was that some of them managed to finally see M104 in Corvus." 

Camp Polaris: 14-16 March 2001 (Tebing Tinggi, Malaysia)

14th March, Wednesday. 5 am. Organization fear. Logistical nightmare. Bad weather. Murphy's Law. Malaysian customs had changed their declaration form for the fifth time on 9th March. More than enough to keep me up thinking of what else might go wrong. By the time I got to sleep, it was about time to leave for the station.

7.40am : Everyone's ready and waiting at the Tanjong Pagar Station. There would be 9 of us from Singapore. As it turns out, while March might be one of the best times to go stellar hunting, many students had to return to their college mid-term exams after the holiday week. Bummer.

These are the braver ones who would choose the stars over their exams.

Customs check. I had suffocated my GP-D mount under a deliberate artful mess of clothes in my backpack; WYO scope on one hand, the Vixen HAL tripod in another. As I expected, I got detained while the officials checked out the FluoroStar. They had their suspicions that it was a telescope capable of far more than just a mere telephotographing. Fortunately, I had pasted a huge Canon sticker over the aluminium case, and a smaller Canon Sticker over the WYO logo on the FluoroStar. They checked if the brand was non-dutiable before releasing me.

Back to the group. It wasn't long before they got comfortable with each other card-playing "tai di" & bridge. Being their first train ride, there were a couple of pointers they weren't aware of. One was the customs check protocol of "Quick = No Need to Wait in Queue." The other was the alighting procedure upon reaching destination Segamat. I was fraught with anxiety that one of them might just get left behind on the train.

12.15pm Segamat. There was a slight delay at the tracks. We were met at the station by Vincent. Two taxis were catered for the transfer to Felcra. Upon arrival, we checked in to rooms 217, 219 & 221 on the third floor. Lunch was a little late at 2pm. Free time. I dropped into bed after making sure that everyone was fine and settled.

Being a small group gave us the luxury of deciding when we would like to do what. We didn't exactly follow the planned schedule. Turned out that a couple of us (me included) were in need of afternoon naps. But in the spirit of astronomy, we were all up at 6.30pm for an introductory course in star-hopping and constellation mapping.

8pm, a slight drizzle but nothing more damaging. Venus hung low in the West sky. Jupiter and Saturn are still in Taurus. Orion was overhead. Mr Au arrived from Singapore to join us. Mr Au and I set up our equipment on the main carpark and pretty much stayed there for the night.

We had our dinner at 9pm. At about 9.30pm, a group of 8 arrived from the Segamat Teochew Association to join us for a few hours of observation. The first night was pretty relaxed. A couple of low clouds flitting in between the stars. Mr Au had plenty of stories to share with everyone.

We had a glimpse of Jupiter and Saturn. M42 Nebula in Orion. M45 Pleiades in Taurus. NGC 2237 Rosette. NGC 2264 Christmas Tree cluster. Etc. Our first night was pretty much free & easy. We hopped around to any objects that came to our minds.

M104 Sombrero Galaxy near Corvus. One of Mr Au's personal favourites. There was a thin layer of atmospheric obstruction. We took turns to search out the object. It wasn't easy. Finally after 30 minutes of sheer eye strain from both of us, I spotted the ghostly glow emanating from the dark central lane. Very NICE! To think that it was there all this time, and we just couldn't figure out why we weren't seeing it. Light pollution was very mild, I would hazard a guess about atmospheric clarity for the difficulty in seeing M104. Lijie and Xiaoqi tried really hard to glimpse this elusive galaxy. Their attempts were swathed by thin cloud layers, unfortunately decreasing overall brightness of the low magnitude object.

15th March, Thursday

2am, clouds had fogged out the stars. The Moon was out, diffusing its light from behind the clouds. We called it a night. Most of them were already off to dreamland. But not bad for their first night under the stars.

7am, the campers were up and ready for breakfast. This was the first in a series of 6 meals (7am, 10am, 1pm, 3.30pm, 7pm, 10pm). *lol!* I think there was general fear of more food today. After breakfast, we dropped back into bed, waking up to lunch at about 1.45pm. After lunch, we dropped back into bed, lazing around so to speak. An hour later, we congregated comfortably in one dorm to expound some ideas and concepts on astronomy.

7pm, dinner, and a session on observation planning before starting out tonight. This being our last night, we had minimum time to do maximum cosmic hunting. Each of us took on at least one constellation, combing out all the NGC-IC-M objects. The list is impressive. Now the hunt begins.

9pm, we were joined by two teachers who had heard about our session at Felcra. Vincent had drove up with his SkySensor unit and scope. Thin clouds soon dispersed, unveiling a nice canopy of stars which became loads clearer when we switched off all the lights at Felcra. 3-point alignments and we were zooming in on stellar treasure troves.

:) SkySensor units on both sides, we pretty much covered the entire universe that night. It made the stars so accessible to the campers. Star clusters were plentiful, as were the number of galaxies. Faint structures could be discerned to the keener eyes, and with seasoned averted visions. The good news then was that some of them managed to finally see M104 in Corvus. I was personally having a field day (night). It was hard not to appreciate the clear skies that we had at Felcra, even if the waning quarter Moon did wash out a lot of the skies after it rose at 1am.

We panned across the lunar surface, crater hunting. The features were sharp, shadows drew long over the lunar mountains into the valleys. A couple of Felcra management trainees joined us then. The Moon was fascinating to say the least.

But the best is yet to come. That also meant that Mars was out. At 150x, it resolved nicely into a faint orange globe with a prominent white polar cap on the southern end. It wasn't a uniform sort of orange, there were some slightly darker markings. I'm wishing now that I'd logged in more time to observe this planet.

3.30am, after all that cruising around the universe, the battery finally ran out. I'm personally quite satisfied at the amount of objects that we'd managed to clock together. I'm just thankful there was no serious cloud injury to the second night's observation.

Thanks for the espirit de camp, everyone! I had a really nice time. I'm really appreciative of the help that everyone offered. The Camp would not have been what it is, had you all been too reserved. Glad that none of you are too coy or shy to get a little crazy down at Camp. :)

Special thanks to Mr Au, Vincent and Sua for dropping by.

By Lin . 20th March 2001, Tuesday.



Camp Vega: 19-21 June 2001 (Gunung Ledang, Malaysia)

The second off-island camp in the spirit of Astronomy 2001. This time we had the stars in our hands. The binocular views of the universe were spectacular.

19th June, Tuesday
I could rest a little easier this time. One bag, a pair of binoculars, my faithful atlas, a change of clothes. *sigh..* The luxury of travel without the astronomical package.  The day progressed smoothly enough. A long lunch, a short hike up the waterfalls, a little nap, a big dinner.

The first night was pleasant. We saw Alpha and Beta Centauri in Centaurus with Crux, twinkling merrily towards the south-west side. A hint of things to come. Constellation-wise, Sagittarius and Scorpius were overhead by midnight. The Big Dipper (Ursa Major) to the north. Near Antares in Scorpius, the planet Mars. A little further out north, two other brighter stars, Arcturus in Bootes and Spica in Virgo; Leo sliding down to sleep in the west. The summer triangle of stars Altair in Aquila, Vega in Lyra, and Deneb in Cygnus, were beginning to rise. The water signs of Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces followed alongside. We managed a glimpse at the Omega Centauri cluster before it set. A delectable glob of stars, one of the finest in the sky. The open clusters M6 & M7 in Scorpius, and we saw M17's Swan nebula.

19th night to 20th morning
4 am, going on 5..
By Lin . 25th June 2001, Monday.

Gas Giants Gazing

11 November 2000 : GAS GIANTS GAZING :
Starring the WYO Fluoro Star 100 (Singapore)

The past few nights have been cloudy with not much hope of seeing even a moonbeam. I received the Fluoro Star 100 on Wednesday morning via Emery Shipping. I had received a call saying that the telescope had arrived in Singapore on Monday, 6th November, but they had to clear some customs check which would take a day of processing. Do note that the customs has every legal right to open up the package without prior permission of the recipient or sender.

The Fluoro Star OTA arrived with an aluminum case fully lined with high density foam. Its identity keeps getting confused with the old TMB which looked pretty similar to the WYO (well, it had the same designer, William Yang.) The exterior was a classy coat of pearl-white, with a touch of 18-carat gold plating around the 4-inch focuser and extendable dew-cap. The scope itself was already a visual treat but can it pass the ultimate test of visual astronomy?

Tonight, a group from the Singastro community got together at Eunos to catch the gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn. It had been raining earlier in the afternoon. I prepped the Fluoro Star for its first public appearance here in Singapore. The full moon was fogged up at 8pm. I kinda expected to head home should the weather not get better. Guess what?! The clouds turned away by 8.30pm. Jupiter was first spotted, followed by Saturn. *All rite!* Party time! :)

When everyone was present, the Fluoro Star's presence was announced. That probably took some by surprise. I gave a short commentary on the scope and it was observation time! (All possible digits crossed for the visual verdict.)

Jupiter at 160x. The image was excellent despite the boiling atmosphere. Distinct bands across the planet could be seen together with 4 of its satellites.

Jump to Saturn at 160x. Again, distinct bands across the planet, and the Cassini division separating the rings around Saturn. *whoa!* I haven't exactly observed Saturn this closely before.

Jump back to Jupiter at 320x. Now this was getting exciting. The image still held beautifully. Distinct red bands running across the planet's surface. 10.45pm, the GRS was beginning to appear. Ok, wow. The last time I remembered being this amazed was at Malaysia looking at Jupiter through the AP 4-inch Traveller. Jupiter held the group's attention for quite a while. I took a closer look at the planet. Hang on! I can see the moons of Jupiter! Not as pricks of light but as actual spheres with differing sizes! Now that kinda shocked me. And I mean, REALLY shocked me. My first true glimpse from Earth of the Jovian moons. This is truly excellent. It also means the Fluoro Star could possibly be pushed to 400x, maybe a bit more.

Ok, it's not the Hubble or the Voyager. I'm no expert in equipment testing, but this takes the cake of the year for me. And to think this was an observation from a light-polluted city area. Atmosphere was cooperating for the first time in a long time. It wasn't totally clear nor steady, but it was the best in the past few weeks, I think. I can't wait to bring it out to Malaysia and unleash the full visual potential of the Fluoro Star in darker skies.

That was about it for the Fluoro Star. I didn't have a finder with me so we didn't get to explore other deep-sky objects. It was already hard enough trying to locate the Moon and planets manually.

The Gas Giants party got crowded after 10pm when curious passers-by joined in to see what we were looking at. Residents from the neighbourhood began looking out of their windows with their binoculars at us and at the sky. Although a little shy at first, they started coming out of their homes to join us for the observation.

Personally, I haven't quite got the chance to fully explore the telescope's visual capabilities before I brought it out to share with the Singastro group. But now, after tonight's session at Eunos, I am really over the moon and genuinely pleased by the telescope's performance. I don't know about the others who were there, but personally I was really hopping happy. This Fluoro Star is one true gem in the visual realm. (I eagerly await comments from you other guys who were there!)

William Yang wasn't kidding when he said this would rival AstroPhysics and Takahashi. I see why now and I wish him well in breaking the astronomical market the world over.

By Lin . 12th November 2000, Sunday.