LennyG

I am a newby too, had a really cheap scope a few years ago till the dog crash tackled it. Decided to get serious (ish) and bought a GSO RC8 carbon and a SW HEQ5PRO. I am very happy so far using it for visual. I am improving my control of the mount manually as I am yet to get it aligned properly. Always seems to be 15deg out. Have checked time settings. The house blocks the SCP and there is a very bright streetlight near the front yard. Aside from that, all is good. Great views of Jupiter, bands clearly visible and on a good night the red spot too. Saturn looks extremely cold ! Can see bands reasonably well on average nights and have clearly seen the Cassini Division a couple of nights. I got the Baader mk4 zoom and Barlow so use the two small spacers that came with the scope and a gso quartz diagonal. Without the Barlow, one small spacer and the large one. Alpha Centauri looked nice tonight very clear to the south. With the Barlow (2.25) on,visual focus limits are reached at about 12 on the 8-24 zoom scale. As expected. Buying the zoom eliminated the guesswork in selecting eyepieces How deep does the rabbit hole go ?! Have a SW ED72 on the way with a TV 4x powermate asi air and 290mini, and a T48 spacer set to go between the 4x and my 7D. 6D mk1 next or asi 1600? Then a 35mm or there abouts wide field eyepiece. Thought about the baader 36 but there seem to be some bad reviews so $$$TV ?! I am in the deep end, drowning in happiness, even though ‘they’ say start smaller. If you are patient go for it. Talk to Luke at Andrews Communications. Happy viewing.