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Well I finally had a window of about 90 minutes last night where it was not raining, and there were patches of clear sky! It takes me back to the days when I first took delivery of the Mary Rose....then I had to wait about two weeks as well for a clear night.
Anyway, notwithstanding a rising fullish moon and lights from neighbours on all three sides, I was able to do some simple observing to get a feel for the modifications. Here are some preliminary thoughts:
1. The new primary fan is so whisper quiet, I could hardly detect it...a couple of times I checked to see that it was actually on - it was.
2. The Feathertouch focuser is simply wonderful to use, buttery smooth with objects snapping into focus. All of my eyepieces came to focus without having to use an extender (with the Moonlite focuser I always had to use an extender). The only "issue" is that the focuser drawtube actually hits the filter slide when fully in (a position not relevant when observing, but one needs to be careful when packing up for the night not to tune the focuser too far into the closed position).
3. The 80mm Stellarvue finder is an absolute ripper. I started off with the 23mm SV supplied EP, which gives a nice 4 degree FOV, but then decided for some fun to put in my 9mm Nagler for comparison. Wow! I could see the four stars in the trap, and a nice green glow for the mass of nebulosity of M42. 47 Tuc was a lovely large cotton ball of stars. I could make out M77 (just). I had originally thought that I might get a 13T6 for the finder, but I am now contemplating perhaps getting an 11T6 instead for the slightly higher resolution of galaxies, so it can help with the star/galaxy hopping use I have in mind. I can always pop in the 13E for a slightly wider FOV as the Ethos has a dual 1.25/2 inch barrel.
The finder is not perfect in all respects. On Sirius there was a thin white line of light running across the FOV from left to right. There is also false colour on the brighter stars, with a blue/violet smear of light about them. I suspect a lot of this is caused by the SV diagonal which does not look to be the best. In reality, of course, my purpose with the finder is to star/galaxy hop in fainter fields, and there is no obvious false colour in such fields. As the problem may well be caused by the SV diagonal, in the long term I might consider getting a better diagonal to attach through the 2 inch rear end of the finder if I can get that arrangement to work / come to focus.
When changing eyepieces I noticed that there is a lot of lubricant on the inside off the helical focuser, but fortunately this is well below the point that either the 23mm supplied EP or the 9T6 reach to within the barrel, so it appears to be a non issue.
4. The motions of the scope are as smooth as I can ever remember. Peter has thoroughly redone all of the movements, and it is obvious from the moment I started moving the scope around.
5. I have realised there is one problem with Peter's system of colour coding the various power cords running from the dew heater.....in red light it is very difficult to distinguish the colours. I am going to redo something which John Bambury kindly did for me a few months ago, by making up some printed labels for each line.
6. The collimation knobs were beautifully smooth to operate - very happy!
All in all, the first night out was as good as I could have hoped. I can't wait to set sail with the Mary Rose under some darker skies!
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