Hi all
I bought a little scope for Jenny tonight. I need to keep her interested and involved with her own scope on Star Nights, but didn't want to go overboard on expense either. I decided not to get her a Dob, but a little 3" Newtonian reflector on an EQ1 German mount to teach us both how equatorial German mounts work. I realise that a Dob would be far better in terms of performance for the dollar - but when we want that we can always fire up the 12". I'm looking at getting a nice EQ sometime for my scope, so I'd like to get to know the basic mechanics before I commit to a good quality one.
I bought a little Orion SpaceProbe 3 EQ from Bintel on the way home this arvo. Michael there stated that he thought it was a great little Newt scope for the money, so I took his advice and went with it.
I made it home & unpacked and assembled the scope in about 20 minutes. It's surprisingly well documented, and even comes with an Orion version of Starry Night 5 - considering that Imaginova now own Orion, I guess that's a great way to get people to find an interest in their core product.
The scope came with both a 25mm and 10mm 1.25" Plossl EP that, whilst not great, aren't too bad to use. It also comes with an Orion EZ-Finder II that is a welcome change from the typical cheesy little finder scope. Although I prefer my own Telrad, it isn't too bad either. The tripod is a little flimsy, but generally built appropriately given the weight and size of the OTA and EQ1 mount. It sort-of does the job alright. The movement of the bearing surfaces in both RA & Dec axes really is quite smooth, and the slo-mo controls work well.
I took it outside at around 9:00pm to see what I could see! I have to say that the sky was fairly bright and I found it diffucult to manually find 47Tuc but I did....and viewed it no problem using both EP's. I tried my TeleVu 9mm and 47Tuc looked surprising bright and well defined. Collimation was spot on out of the box and focus was pin sharp - even sharper than my LX200 I'd dare to say...
At the end of the evening I succesfully found M8 as well - which ain't too bad for my first time solely depending on star charts to find things, and getting to understand the twisty German mount at the same time. I have to say I rather enjoyed the experience, am rather proud of my little achievement tonight.
For $299 I think it's a cracker little scope. As a 3" it's lovely and portable, so I can fit in the car along with the 12" and all the peraphenalia that goes with it. On top of that, I just like the idea that anyone can spend as little money as I did on this and go out and actually have fun with it. Cheap and fun scopes will certainly get more interest going in hobby astronomy - and that can only be good for all of us.
Cheers
Chris