6" Evostar second light

[jimlennie]

The seeing last night was really good, de-focussed star images of the fresnel rings were very steady with no fluttering. I saw my best Jupiter view ever with my new Skywatcher Evostar 150/F8 refractor. The cloud bands were extremely crisp and well detailed with plenty of irregularities visible as was the great red spot. I had my Hyperion 8-24mm zoom eyepiece in the scope and was pleased to note that it did not show what appeared to be coma on the 24, 20, 16 settings when used with my ED80 and Skyliner 10" Dob. I watched as a moon transited Jupiter's disk ( later found out to be Europa ) and I could clearly see the inky black spot on the clouds of the planet. The Evostar clearly outperformed my 10" reflector tonight on Jupiter as the view was much more detailed and more pleasant to look at, driven tracking on the HEQ5 helped here of course. There was a very slight purple tinge on Jupiter's limb, but compared with diffraction spikes and coma produced by the well-collimated ( I hope ! ) reflector the refractors view was simply stunning.

My session was interrupted by a phone call which lasted nearly 45 minutes and I was very pleased to see that Jupiter was still in the field of view of my Hyperion zoom ( at 8mm= 150x ), I've had my HEQ5 for nearly 2 years now and it has been a trouble free piece of kit and it handles the big refractor easily.

The focusser is still an issue though but will be resolved soon as I'm expecting a delivery from FLO this week, it's the moonlight 2 speed crayford focusser in gold.

I also tried out the Baader Skysurfer V on my Evostar and it works really well, easy to setup and adjust and it comes with high quality mounts to suit different scopes. I used it to locate the ring nebula as it was almost overhead and I found it easily using this beautifully engineered device.

Apart from the phone interruption it's great when everything comes together under a clear steady sky and these are the times when it all becomes so worthwhile, this hobby of ours.

Jim

[FLO]

Nice report Jim

[Naz]

Good report Jim, glad to hear your pleased with the frac.

naz

[centroid]

Good report Jim, very informative.

Dave

[geppetto]

Sounds like your pleased with the scope Jim 8)

Always looks like a "proper" scope does that 6" F8

[jimlennie]

Sounds like your pleased with the scope Jim 8)

Always looks like a "proper" scope does that 6" F8

Yes it does ! Just had a call from Steve @ FLO to say that my moonlight focusser has arrived so I'm going to collect it today as I live quite close to Exeter.

The optics on this ota seem to be very good according to the defocussed star images as the fresnel rings are almost perfectly circular with no irregularites visible on the black circles inside and outside of focus. CA is minimal but slightly more visible than I used to get with my old 120mm Evostar. On Jupiter I can see a very slight purple tinge on the limb of the planet. I haven't tried it on the moon yet but looking at Vega the star was an intense and brilliant blue dot with a single faint purple halo around it, through my 10" reflector the same star had a halo of white glare plus the diffraction spikes ( which my wife likes ! ) the image through the Evostar was much better in my opinion.

I'll report on the fitting of the moonlight to the Evostar's ota later and I'm looking forward to trouble free focussing from now on as the one supplied with the scope is truly hideous.

Jim

[tom.yates]

Great report

[skysplitter]

hi jim thanks for the detailed description of what you saw through your scope,sometimes its difficult for me as a beginner to get an idea of what people are seeing.Your view of jupiter sounds very exciting.

Have you tried your telescope on any deepsky objects and if so could you give a description of your views.

[jimlennie]

hi jim thanks for the detailed description of what you saw through your scope,sometimes its difficult for me as a beginner to get an idea of what people are seeing.Your view of jupiter sounds very exciting.

Have you tried your telescope on any deepsky objects and if so could you give a description of your views.

Will do ! Have only seen M57 the Ring nebula through the Evostar so far and it looked great, a very sharply defined oval which looked a wispy grey colour, unfortunately the moon was up at the time ( nearly full ) so I couldn't see the central star in the nebula. The double cluster looked fantastic through the refractor with a 2" 38mm Q70 eyepiece as all the stars were pin sharp with jet black around them all. Got home late tonight so no chance of any viewing despite the extremely clear and dark sky. As I parked-up I could see Jupiter almost on the western horizon and it was shining very steady even at that altitude. Never mind , too tired tonight.

Jim