Assembled the new scope and it had first light on Thursday.
After collimating and giving it a star test I was very happy with the overall performance. Nice and bright crystal clear views of the Moon, 47 Tuc and Christened with a very sharp Io Jupiter transit. All I can say is bring on a dark sky and get the object locator smokin' on plenty of deep sky stuff.
Hi Greg
Moonlite is not standard but the focuser that comes with it isn't too bad.
The heaviest part is the OTA housing the mirror and cell but I can lift it OK.
I ordered the padded cases for both OTA and truss poles so packed up will fit in your average car. The base is also collapsible if your cramped for space.
All up it is very good optically and well worth the money I think.
Cheers Rick
Geoff (Inmykombi) and I got this scope out last night again.
The seeing conditions were probably about 8.5/10 and this scope more than exceded my expectations of how it would perform.
The views of Jupiter and the Moon were literally "out of this world" no kidding! So much detail.
If this is any indication of it's performance under dark skies then I'm holding my breath.
Congratulations, Rick. It looks very smart, and by the sounds the "looks" are pretty "smart" too!
It is amazing what a bit of extra aperture does, just wait until you have some time looking at M42 under a dark sky, stupendous!
I am interested to hear how the controller compares with the Argo. Does it work on a similar principle, with direction arrows indicating where to swivel the scope? How comprehensive is the database? Can you download ephemera?
always happen rick!!! you wait and wait the day you buy theres a new model a week later. hows the scope going????
Yeah Moz, a new model, but I'm quite happy with push to.
Itchin' to get under some good dark sky.
By the way, will be up your way around February 3rd and hope to catch up then.
Cheers
Congratulations, Rick. It looks very smart, and by the sounds the "looks" are pretty "smart" too!
It is amazing what a bit of extra aperture does, just wait until you have some time looking at M42 under a dark sky, stupendous!
I am interested to hear how the controller compares with the Argo. Does it work on a similar principle, with direction arrows indicating where to swivel the scope? How comprehensive is the database? Can you download ephemera?
Hi and thanks Rod
Lookin' good so far. Maybe PC on the 6th.
The controller is pretty good mate and has a database of about 14,000 objects. Finds things just like Argo and I like the instant input of the keypad rather than turning the dial. It has the direction arrows like Argo and some interesting things that argo hasn't (mind you I like argo as well and argo certainly has some features that the object locator hasn't) but it does the job quite well. It hasn't got an external power source jack,(it is battery powered) but I'm sure I could adapt one to suit if need be.
It has an RS 232 jack for downloading software updates but I'm not sure whether it can be used for direct download of ephemera?
You can add up to 99 user defined objects by RA and Dec to use as favourites or whatever, so it has some versatility.
Cheers Rick
Hope it all goes well and congrats on your new scope too.
