Observing report, with new 10" Dob.

[Dave47tuc (David)]

Hi all ,

After selling my 10" Lx200 and 120mmF5 Refractor. I brought a Bintel Premium 252 Dob. Basically GS-880. With crayford focuser and cooling fan on back of mirror. Also a 8x50 erect image finder.

So is this scope a come down from the Meade?
No way at all
After unpacking the scope i thought geez that looks great

I had to put togeather the mount easy enough, don't know if i would pull it apart again. I don't think the screws would bind to the cheap chip board as well again. Once togeather the mount was very good.

The tube was all ready to go, I just added my Rigel quick finder.
So once all togeather I thought that's a very nice unit.

How would it go under the Stars

I have used it twice now but I will report on last nights observing.

After setting up well before dark, took a few pics,(not digital) turned the fan on and went inside for a while.

I like observing in twilight, so Saturn was my first target. Seeing was average to good. 3/5. Never really go better all night.

Saturn was very good I used my 8.8mm UWA with No11 filter. Very pleased with the view. Could have used more Mag. I have no higher power eyepiece at this stage.

One point was I found it difficult to get focus with my 12mm Nagler and 8.8UWA in the 2" slot. Had to pull the eyepiece out to much. No problems with the 1.25" slot.

My friend Julian arrived with his box full of Naglers.
I used many eyepieces from the 31 Nagler down to the 2.5mm Nagler. All came to focus ok.

When Julian arrived the Moon and Saturn had gone behind my house. So we focused on Juipter and many DSO's.

The 10" Dob worked very well to excellent, tracked smoothly(better than I had ever thought ) We could track Jupiter at 500x No problem. This mount really works well

The seeing was not really upto a Real Star test but we did one anyway and found the optics of Excellent quality. Any F5 scope at 500x to hold a good view can't be to bad.

It's been a while for me to do Star hopping but I haven't lost it. As I hunted down Quasar 3C273. Fist time Julian had seen it and the second for me. My last time was in the 1980's. But someone then showed me. So this was the first time I had hunted it down.

So it was a very good night, the scope is great. That crayford focuser is super smooth.

The 31mm Nagler in this scope is as in most scopes

I did get a 30mm Super View eyepiece with this scope. All I can say it's ok at best. I'll keep it as a good star hopping eyepiece.
It's not even in the ball park of the Tele Vue's.


So It's not a come down from the Meade, just another good 10" scope that i will use more often. That makes this scope better for me

Sorry for the long report

[mick pinner]

Nice report Dave,
l've never actually looked through any of the dob mounted scopes and would be interested to see how they perform, if you take a look at * post a shot of your rig * you will see that l have set up my 10" while l sort out the problems with the Meade, l'm not that far away so maybe we could catch up and talk about our new 10's.

[wavelandscott (Scott)]

Glad you are enjoying the new scope...

Like has been said many times before, the best scope for you is the one that you will use often...

Clear Skies!

[Starkler (Geoff)]

Glad that you like it Dave
How would you compare value for money to the 120mm achromat you recently bought? ( I think I know the answer ) .

Any balance issues with the 31nag ?

One thing we could try next time we meet is comparing the 27mm panoptic to the 30mm SV.

(OT: that quasar sure sounds like a fascinating object, just had a read about it here http://www.seds.org/~spider/spider/Misc/3c273.html )

[Dave47tuc (David)]

120 is good but the 10" is one of the best value for money scopes i have seen

The 12" would be good, but i think for me to big and heavy.
Also the 10" fits in my car and the 12" would not.

The 31mm is a big eyepiece and does throw the scope out of balance a bit. Most of the big ep's do.

The 30mm SV would not be as good as any Pano. But for its price its not to bad. Would work better on a larger FL scope.

It was very pleaseing to find 3c273.

[Dave47tuc (David)]

Originally posted by mick pinner
Nice report Dave,
l've never actually looked through any of the dob mounted scopes and would be interested to see how they perform, if you take a look at * post a shot of your rig * you will see that l have set up my 10" while l sort out the problems with the Meade, l'm not that far away so maybe we could catch up and talk about our new 10's.

Hope you Meade gets sorted Mick.

Would like to catch up someday. We may have a local Iceinspace Star party some day

As our Northerners are doing.

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

Nice report

One question, how do you tell the difference visually of a Quasar and a normal looking star?

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

That's easy Andrew. You hold a piece of undeveloped photographic film behind your head. If when you process it you have an image of your skull from being Xrayed you've been looking at a quasar God i cut myself sometimes

[iceman (Mike)]

Sounds great Dave! Are you going to supercharge it with DSC's and a tracking platform?

[Dave47tuc (David)]

Originally posted by Astroman
Nice report

One question, how do you tell the difference visually of a Quasar and a normal looking star?

Andrew,
I used the charts in Australian Sky & Telescope Page 67.

[Dave47tuc (David)]

Originally posted by iceman
Sounds great Dave! Are you going to supercharge it with DSC's and a tracking platform?

Not yet Mike,
In the future i will put DSC's on it.

But I like Star hopping, gets me back to some real treasure hunting.

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

Cool Dave. Dobs give that satisfaction that you found what you where looking for! Not just pushing buttons.

Glad to hear you are enjoying it. My GS 30mm SuperView is brilliant so I can't wait to try a better 2" EP if they are that much better.

Welcome to the 'Dobber Club'.