Well what a night! I partly christened my new scope, Al Meehan did it the night before. I am very happy with it although I have not fired up the Argo Navis yet due to a cable being left in Melbourne, but hopefully that will arrive today.
The scope was brought up to from Melbourne to Thirroul by a friend of the seller, and was in good condition when I picked it up. I might add I met the seller there as well. Nice Guy, I was so lucky that he came up on holiday, saved a lot in frieght.
I must say this scope has had a journey to get it, being hit by a P plate driver on the way down (thankfully no damage but the P plater drove off after I got out to look at the potential damage. Hit car/radiator took the brunt of the tow bar on the Subaru.) . Then an irate mother in the car park of the twin servos at Wyong – who I think was suffering a major hormone imbalance, accusing me of hitting her car with my door. The mark she was pointing to was 4 inches higher than my door extent? Never Argue with a woman even wneh they are wrong!!! All up the round trip journey took 6.5 hours – and it was worth it.
As indicated, Alan tested it Sunday night, as it is still at his place - LOL. He said the views were great. Green with envy I arranged to call over last night. I got there just at sunset, yep keen but tired. It took about 10minutes to set up and collimate.
As it was early in the evening I focused on Sirius, observed the coma of the scope in all its glory. But man what a view…
I then turned to the obvious – M42
and viewed this evolving through the twilight
. Watching the green around the trap then moving onto feint blue hues and the rose wisps throughout the neb were delightful and energising
. The seeing was not the best but it was so easy to see all the stars in the trap resolved and sharp (A-G). Then turned to the tarantula neb – wow. So I wondered what would a planet look like – quickly spun around to Saturn that was rising out of the murk of Newcastle lights. I was so blown away at the clarity and sharpness of the planet and the moons (I counted 6 possibly 7 without actually looking up a table). It has been sooooo long since I had actually looked through a scope at the stars, I would say probably since 2005?
So far I am impressed with the scope – yes it has limitations, yes the design is not the best, and yes the base is too large, but overall I am happy with the Lightbridge. It is easy to setup, and I am sure will give the wow factor for a long time to come.
Might even consider taking the optics out some time and building into a assembly to image with?
probably muck about with the argo navis this weekend
