Thanks all! David, I can safely say that the seeing on this night was the best I've ever experienced. I've always had this mentality that those beautiful airy disks you see in books and other literature were a myth...yeah right there's no way I'll ever see anything like that while we have an atmosphere! Until now! The image quality really did hold up surprisingly well.
Paddy, NGC 1999 is a unique object well worth a look, and like many other nice targets, it suffers from its proximity to a well known showpiece object so is often overlooked. It needs a bit of magnification to bring out the dark feature, 300x or more will do it, it's quite a small object.
Ken & Wren - this night confirmed to me that this scope is a keeper! Infact, to cut a long story short, by using this scope along with my 12", it was found that the 12" Adcock mirror was underperforming compared to the 8", so I had the 12 sent off to get it tested and was found to have some astigmatism and zonal issues. Before getting the 8", I had nothing to compare the Adcock glass to and visually the effects being quite subtle, it was hard to tell whether it was seeing or the mirror. Only after viewing through the 8" that the ball dropped......
The end result....well... just got a call from Peter Read the other day that my 12" Zambuto is off to the coaters
Wren, this a fantastic scope. I've added a Moonlight focuser and dew heaters for it and replaced the ground board to increase stability and will make a great compliment to the 12".