Not sure which sections is best suited to this so guess here will do!
I thought it’s about time I posted on the activities to date with my new telescope – Bintel 10” Dob. Right angle 8x50 finder scope. It came with the standard eyepieces 9mm & 15mm Plossel’s and 26mm 2”. I added to the collection a 6mm Plossel and 32mm 2” hoping to have a reasonably extensive range of magnifications to start off with. On reflection, the 32mm may be a little redundant as it’s close in mag to the 26mm, but a reasonable wide field anyway. I also grabbed an Orion Collimation Eyepiece while I was at it.
On getting the telescope home and assembling it, I have to say I was very happy with the quality and condition of all components. 45 min to get it all together and looking like the picture on the owner’s manual and every part was in pristine condition with not as much as a fingerprint anywhere! I checked collimation and it looked spot on compared to the instructions with the collimating eyepiece, as well as other sources found. Very happy with this as I didn’t want to mess around with the collimation before first light.
First light: a couple of weeks ago now, was a little disappointing, but only because it revealed my lack of knowledge of the sky. Jupiter was great but very low in the west. The telescope performed well and what I saw was great, but I ended up aimlessly surfing around trying to discover things for myself! I guess there are plenty of people doing this anyway, but it’s also nice to have at least a few known objects to observe. After looking at Stellarium and trying to learning the constellations and objects visible this time of year, I noticed the Azimuth/Altitude coordinates constantly changing whenever an object was selected. This lead to a rare epiphany… the concept of designing and constructing a manual object locator by adding degree scales to each axis.. It soon became obvious after doing a little research to locate axis template programs or methods to create it myself, this is far from an original idea, but at least I felt confident it should work!!!
Well, two weeks after the initial concept, many Cloudy Nights finding PDF files with the Azi/Alt scales (yes, small reference there!), some quality time in the shed, a bit of housework dodging and I had my prototype push-to system. My design is different to most I’ve seen in that it didn’t require altering/drilling/cutting/damaging the original base and is independent from the original Dob mount. Basically the original mount sits on a level adjustable base with the Azi scale but still remains adjustable and the Alt scale and pointer clip on and off as needed. I just needed a clear night to test it, rare these days hey!
Sunday night looked like it was going to be a winner as at around 4pm there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. 7pm took out the base, leveled it with a standard spirit level, set the Azi scale to approx accurate, put he scope on the base, aligned the Alt scale to very close to square with the centre of the bearing (using any old straight edge/ruler). All up took easily less than 15 minutes to set up. All that was left was to set the pointers at the appropriate places once centred on a known object.
At approx 20:15 low cloud started passing over and I wasn’t happy. I held out and kept a close eye out for rain but it never really got that thick. 21:00 after dinner etc went out to test it out. Fired up Stellarium (set to my coordinates), located a bright star – Fomalhaut – centred it in the finder and main telescope and adjusted both Azi/Alt pointers to the angles specified for this star. (I’ll skip most details of the issue I had by setting the Azi scale 180 deg in wrong direction at initial setup!! I can adjust this scale but only by approx 30 deg in either direction. Fixed with a bent skewer and bluetac rather than moving everything and starting again. First lesson learnt!!). Anyway, back to the computer to pick a test object to see if I’d just wasted 2 weeks work and selected M30, as it was getting low on the horizon/neighbours roof and out of view shortly any. I had the 26mm 2” eyepiece thinking a wide view would help for any error in adjustments, I moved the telescope to the coordinates for M30 on Stellarium, held my breath and looked through the eyepiece… There, just northeast of centre, was a fuzzy little globular cluster. I gotta admit, I was pretty excited!! After testing out the accuracy without any further axis adjustments, every object I set the coordinates for was somewhere in the field of view of the 26mm eyepiece. I thought I’d still need to do a bit of scanning to find what I was looking for, so this far outperformed my expectations.
Objects observed this night:
M30 – With 26mm/48x and low on the horizon it is quite small compared to the field of view with few resolved stars. Looked to be a little lopsided with the star field stretching further to the southeast as opposed to rounded. Almost a little difficult to focus at all but I put this down to a lot of moisture in the atmosphere, light pollution and too close to twilight. With 9mm/139x it was bigger but still difficult to resolve. I guess it’s a bit lat to get reasonable views until next year, or better, darker location.
M2 – 26mm again small, individual stars better resolved than M30 but again, low on horizon and poor seeing may have affected view. 9mm was no great improvement.
Uranus – 26mm I tried to find this planet manually on past occasions and had no luck, and had to search a little this time too, but after a couple of realignments just to check was pretty sure I had is as the colour appeared distinctly green. It wasn’t until I changed to the 9mm a small disc appeared and confident I had it. Didn’t go to the 6mm but will try that another time.
NGC 253 – One I’ve been looking forward to for a while and couldn’t find manually. Again with the 26mm, straight to it, centre FOV. Appeared as an elongated disc but quite dim. With conditions as they were, it was still clearly visible but little detail to be seen. Having looked at many photos posted here recently it was nice to see this first hand. Didn’t try the 9mm as it took up approx half the FOV in the 26mm so guessed it wouldn’t help the cause. I’m looking forward to darker skies with this one.
47 Tuc – I wasn’t sure I’d be able to see this due trees and other obstruction but ended up well clear of these. Because I’m on the northern fringe of Sydney, it’s located directly above the city glow from where I am so wasn’t expecting all that much. Well what can you about this object… WOW!! Super impressive and well resolved in both 26 and 9mm. Stars everywhere! Spent a lot of time observing this and look forward to visiting again soon.
NGC 55 – Only attempted with the 26mm again but clear and distinct hazy strip. Not quite as bright as 253 and didn’t really notice a brighter core. Will try again in better conditions.
I was totally satisfied with how this session went. Conditions weren’t idea and I didn’t even mention the neighbours bedroom light illuminating the whole of my backyard! The Go-To system worked like a dream and I’m planning on using it identify some of the dimmer stars in some of the unfamiliar constellations as an aid to learning the sky. Construction was a total of approx $50 including Kwik Kopy printing of the azimuth circle at 600mm. I believe this will allow a lot more time observing objects for a beginner like myself as opposed to spending many hours searching a currently unfamiliar sky. I just hope I level the platform as well next time!! Looking forward to dark skies soon too!
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the moon!!! Brilliant!! But another time hey…
Nice report mate. I love my 10inch. When you eventually upgrade to some premium EP's, you will be truely blown away. A good eyepiece represents more than half the optics in a telescope.
"A $1000 telescope with a $50 eyepiece will give you $50 views. A $1000 telescope with a $500 eyepiece will give you million dollar views".
I didn't think this was true till I bought a couple of good EP's.
Geoff, I've been keeping a close eye on the regular pony club meetings and would definitely be keen to come along. Be good to meet a few people and get under darker skies than here.
StarLane, I'm already thinking of adding one or two new eyepieces. It seem the consensus is better eyepieces = better views. Now, if I could only work out which one to get first... What's your fav for DSO's as you have the same telescope??? Need more reseach and exposure probably and plenty more questions.
Eric and Norm, I will keep the reports coming.... if the sky ever clears...
I gotta admit, I was pretty excited!! After testing out the accuracy without any further axis adjustments, every object I set the coordinates for was somewhere in the field of view of the 26mm eyepiece. I thought I’d still need to do a bit of scanning to find what I was looking for, so this far outperformed my expectations.
