I've been hanging out here for a little while and it is probably about time I did an intro. I'm in metro Perth and use a recently acquired a Celestron Edge HD 800 on VX mount. It was purchased for app and electronics development to fill in some downtime with our business, but we're busy again so that will probably have to wait.
I have managed to get out and test the scope a few times. The first couple of times aligning the mount was a disaster - after aligning the first star it would do an epic slew over the top to point down into the garden. Adding more stars never fully got things right. In the end I manually guided over to Saturn and I can't express how exciting it was to see that for the first time after 2 hours of fighting the mount. It was a good night - the Cassini division was clearly visible and I'm pretty sure I could see some banding on the planet.
I have since upgraded the controller firmware and goto is working well. I also set some bricks vertically into the lawn with some registration points drilled into them. That is quite stable - better than I expected.
With the mount working I've viewed a few things: the moon is a forgiving target, as is 47 Tucanae. I've been able to spot Omega Centauri in the finder but has been down in the light pollution and combined with neighbours lights everywhere, I can't make out much through the scope. A satellite came tumbling through the finder at one point which was a fine surprise.
Just about everything else seems to behind trees.
I've attached a photo of the setup. It was a good choice for our needs, although from looking through the finder, it seems a good short focal length refractor will needed.
- Jayeson