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Well the GSO 2" star diagonal turned up late today, yippee.
I had the tripod and mount out already pointing to the south celestial pole, what Bresser call the "polar home position". As for the second part of procedure using the polar alignment viewfinder, no idea.
I'll revisit another time. I'm not imaging so l don't think it matters.
So what did l see?
Lots!
The 2" SD is so much better than the cheap plastic 1.25" the scope came with. Still using 1.25 EP's but the difference is vast.
I was very surprised at the physical size of it, it's big.
Venus was up, tons of CA looking at that.
Jupiter had me sitting on a sheet of plywood on the lawn looking straight up for 15 or 20 mins.
Best view of Jupiter l have managed thus far.
I swung back to where Venus was and looked around the Sagittarius area, lots to see in there. A nice size smudge is what first caught my attention but only having a 15mm EP l couldn't see much more.
Speaking of EP's, l have the 26mm which came with my scope, and a 20 & 15 GSO superviews and a GSO Edge-On Planetary 5mm for the planets. I should have tried it out on that smudge.
I do have a GSO 2.5 Barlow lens but for some reason it just would not slide into the SD, strange.
After packing up l realised the problem, the Barlow was still attached to part of the old SD, that will do it. On closer inspection l think one of the elements in the Barlow is cracked on the edge, I'll have to surgically removed the old SD with a Dremel as the locking screw is broken off, hence l didn't know what was wrong until l got inside.
All in all a reasonable night.
Going to cost me a few 2" EP's now to get even more out of the scope and a night away in the bush somewhere.
That mango tree is definately going, kills my views from the back yard.
Thanks for reading, looking forward to meeting some fellow Perth sky watchers one day.
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