Moonlite CF2-S Focusser on a Evostar 150/F8

[jimlennie]

Finally got the moonlite from Steve/FLO yesterday and I have to say what a beautiful piece of engineering this is. I won't go through the usual expletives when describing this focusser as everyone knows how good they are.

Fitting took 5 minutes and the fit into the original housing is really quite tight and not sloppy like the original focusser. The only disappointing thing about the moonlite is that although you can collimate it via it's flange you have to make the adjusments with the focusser removed and keep going to and fro till you get alignment. In fairness to moonlite this Evostar's mechanical alignment of the drawtube to the optical alignment ( centre of the lens ) was about 2" off centre as measured with a laser in the drawtube and a centred disk in the lens cell. The best I could get was within 10mm of the centre spot with the moonlite as I got fed up with taking it on and off the ota. The orion crayford on my reflector has 3 grub screws on the outside of the flange making this adjustment a breeze, unless I've overlooked something in my eagerness to fit the focusser I think that this is a backward step.

The focusser drawtube which has a very nice gloss black finish to it has already been marked with 2 sleeks after one operation of the focusser to full travel, again comparing it to my Orion crayford which has an unmarked drawtube after a lot of use I find this a little bit off-putting as the glossy finish tends to draw attention to this defect.

I haven't had the chance yet to try it out on the night sky but on terrestial objects the focussing movement is indeed superb, I especially like the fine control knob as this works very well. I also like the way that when the ota is pointed towards the zenith and there is a fairly heavy eyepiece and 2" diagonal in it the focus does not wander at all, the drawtube seems to lock itself when the focussing knobs are not being used.

I have also gained a few inches in eyepiece height from the ground as the extra weight of this focusser has allowed me to move the ota forwards in the mount, this should be quite helpful.

I also like the fact that the moonlite provides 2 saddles for your finders, I have mounted the Baader Skysurfer V in one and the Skywatcher 9x50 RACI finder in the other, the best of both worlds for my use.

The compression ring fittings are also very nice to use as they have extra long screws allowing access to them easily when locking a 2" diagonal into place for example.

All in all I am very pleased with this purchase and I love the gold colour on the focusser, it's a pity about the long winded collimation though but Moonlite say that their focussers are checked prior to despatch and they are spot on, a fact which I do not dispute as I already knew that my Evostar's focusser alignment was miles off.

I can't wait to try it out on Jupiter if the sky is clear tonight, here are some pictures of the moonlite :---

Jim

[FLO]

Good review Jim

I reealy like that last pic 8)