Good night tonight for trying out the 3" Newt

[Omaroo]

What a good night for observing! :) The seeing from our place in southern Sydney right now is fabulous - the best it's been for quite a few days.

I thought I'd see what Jenny's new little Orion 3" Newt and its standard Explorer 10mm EP went like tonight. Within 10 minutes I'd found and seen (in surprisingly good detail - this unit is razor sharp in focus) 47Tuc, M6, M7, M8, M22 and nearly M20 before it dissappeared below the horizon. Not a bad unit at all for the money - which is good news for beginners who can't or won't spend lots of money - but still wish to see something. M8 (Lagoon Nebula) was pretty feint, but I could make it out after a while. The Orion EZ Finder II is actually OK. I'm almost willing to say that it's more reliable in positioning a star than the Telrad. If you remember to keep both eyes open the dot and glass plane it's projected onto don't over-power the star. I think I'll get one for the ETX too....

Anyway - back to it!

[Gargoyle_Steve]

It's great to hear that your compact scope is going to work so well for her, I'd love to get something like that for my 7 year old son (or the mini-dob that Dr Morbius has made for mini-Morbius) but to be honest my son isn't showing much interest at all - he barely pauses to look at the moon through my dob, anything less interesting just pales in comparison to Lego, Star Wars, etc.

I've mounted a red dot finder on my ETX-70 and I do find it excellent, it just suits such a short, compact scope so well! I also have a Telrad, which is mounted on my dob - I find both finders great but in slightly different ways, if that makes sense.
For a small scope go the red dot path as they are so much more compact, just make sure you have one where you can turn the brightness right down.