Gatchaman

Thanks guys.

As I said above, I'll get a more considered second-light review put together when the eyepieces arrive.

Not had much luck getting any 'proper' viewing done the last few days with friends etc. coming round, and had to do some quick and 'dirty' set-ups to catch Jupiter and the Moon for them to gasp at

What I can say is that there are a lot more Pro's than Con's to owning this 'scope.

Andrew, I love some peoples impressions of free and while I like the idea of a binoviewer, my wallet doesn't.

By the way, is it normal to be thinking about what upgrades and new 'scopes you could buy so soon after getting your first one?

All the best,

Richard

After a bit of deliberation, and a few chats with Steve at FLO, eventually plumped for the 6se as my first ever telescope. Only had a look through a pretty poor Tasco refractor before, so was a little unsure of what to really expect.

Ordered the 'scope on Wednesday and it duly arrived the next day (thanks Steve), unfortunately the Revelation Eyepiece set is on back-order so I will be limited to 60x with the 25mm E-lux Plossl until it comes. The 'scope came just as I had started to cut the grass, so put it aside as I finished off cutting the lawn (quickest it's ever been done).

Was pleasantly surprised with the heft of the box when I took it inside and promptly started to reveal it's many layers, very nicely packaged I must say.

Opened the tripod box first and was a little surprised at how thick the legs looked on it (something that is hard to get across from an image on the net) pulled it out and put it to one side, had a very nice feeling of solidity to it. Opened the accessory box next and all seemed to be in order, eyepiece seemed to have a nice weight to it (compare to the Tasco ones I had handled before) and a feeling of quality, diagonal was not quite as impressive, but this was just my initial reaction. Left the best (in my eyes) to last and finally opened the OTA box, again the OTA was bigger than I had expected - maybe because the Alt-Az base is already attached - which I promptly put in pride of place on my kitchen work top. I thought that the OTA would be a flat orange colour but was in fact a snazzy metallic orange, not to everyone's taste I know but I thought it looked OK.

The entire thing was an absolute doddle to put together once I had moved it outside again, only thing that held me up was finding the bubble level which I had left in a box inside. Must mention one thing here, the accessory tray/tripod leg brace did not come with the spring as shown in the manual, no biggy as it still tightened up and worked perfectly. The only tool I needed was a Phillips screwdriver to attach the Red Dot Finder.

As it was still daylight, attached the 'scope to my new power pack and switched on... the handset sprung to life, with the Align prompt scrolling by. Decided to line up the finder with the OTA on a distant chimney, which was easy enough to do, though the finder needed a lot of tweaking to get it in line. The optics, even at this time, looked to be great to my 'virgin' eyes. Switched everything off and decided to leave it outside until it was dark - praying that the light cloud cover would dissipate.

Came out just before dark as I knew Jupiter should be visible to the SW, and lo and behold it was. Still some patchy thin cloud about but luckily did not obscure my view. Flicked the power on and slewed round in the general direction - quite noisy but I don't think it will keep the neighbours awake aligned the planet with the RDF, then looked through the eyepiece... there was something there all right but just towards the bottom of the FOV and out of focus, quickly centred it and refocused (as many have said there is some image shift here, but the moment easily made me overlook this) and it just popped into sight. And what a sight, I could see a very bright small disk, with brown horizontal lines/patches to the north and south - moons were easily visible to either side as small star-like dots, the image was swimming quite a bit as you would imagine but I was truly in awe. Just stared like this for quite some time, manually correcting as it slid west, before I rushed into the house to tell the wife and kids, who duly came out and spent some time at the eyepiece - missus said it was alright while the kids thought it was cool - before I eased them off. Watched it like this until it disappeared behind some trees. Should hopefully stand a fair bit of magnification when I get my eyepiece set with it being so bright. As for the Celestron eyepiece itself, without any frame of reference I will leave that until I get the Revelation set to make any judgements.

Was now starting to get dark proper, but there was still some large patches of thin wispy cloud about, not enough to put me off but annoying all the same.

By this time there were enough stars out for me to try doing a proper SkyAlign. Entered date/time/co-ords etc. and was asked for the first of the three stars for alignment (must add here that the 'scope looks to be in near perfect collimation, with lovely concentric diffraction rings either side of focus), pointed to three bright stars - Polaris, Arcturus and Altair - pressed align and held my breath... Alignment Failed... damn. Tried the next option to align on two named stars, picked Polaris and Arcturus again and held my breath, this time it worked a charm picked Albireo and it was put close to the centre of the frame, very impressed, lovely separation as you would expect with a great contrast between the colours (left the 'scope tracking Albireo as I had to go in for a while as some friends came round to visit. When I came back over 30mins later, Albireo was still nicely in the FOV). Next was M13, which was quite disappointing as a very dim fuzzy ball, but seeing conditions were not at their best at this point as thin cloud had rolled in again With this being my first time stargazing proper, I was pretty much all over the place after that, with little rhyme or reason to what I was viewing, the patchy seeing added to the sense of urgency too... Couldn't get a view of the Moon as this was hidden behind a hideous carbuncle (house), but all in all not too bad a night despite being a little bit hectic.

Will get a more coherent viewing list put together after the initial excitement dies down and will try to get you a more considered and concise review of the 'scope too.

Sorry for taking up so much of your time but I got a little excited there.

All the best and dark skies,

Richard