prior to Christmas I ordered a Celestron C8 NGT from Astronomy Online.
I chose this scope after thinking about it for a long time-over 6 months -before finally deciding because
- I wanted at least 8 inches aperture
- I wanted GoTo, mainly because I didnt want to spend too much time looking for stuff
- I wanted a fast scope because I was primarily looking for a scope for photography (this is f/5)
- Phil Harrington did a review of this scope in "Astronomy" and rated the optics as the best he has seen
- the price was good-least markup over US prices for any scope I could find
- a visit to the yahoo user groups suggested that there were fewer complaints with this mount than say the Meade LXD 55 or 75
- the mount can be autoguided and people have done some seriously good astrophotography with this scope and the Canon 300D
anyway the scope arrived a couple of weeks ago resulting in cloud, rainstorms and hail up and down the entire east coast of Australia.
when I did finally did get to try the scope out I found that the three star alignment woudn't work.
The dealer, Glen at Astronomy Online was really helpful. I was able to take the mount down to his store-he has a huge showroom in Sydney with more assembled scopes than you can see in a star party- and he was able to straight away replace the mount with no fuss.
Yesterday was first light - a clear Saturday night can you believe it
I set up and star aligned without pain, and after the obligatory visit to M42, was able to observe some objects that I have never been able to see from my backyard-the Crab Nebula, the Eskimo nebula, the "Little Fish", as well as Saturn, Jupiter, M78, and a host of the usual suspects such as Tuc 47, Eta Carina, Acrux and Alpha Centauri.
After a hour or two of visual observing I imaged Saturn and Jupiter with the Atik 1C..will get around to processing one of these days
I think I am going to like my new scope. The one thing I have to get used to is how BIG it is compared to my 5 inch Andrews/Skywalker..but the extra aperture has already shown what it can do by pulling in objects like the Crab
