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Hello from Leicestershire

Simes

By Simes
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Simes

Simes

Posted
Posted

Hi,

Just thought I should introduce myself.

Well - my name is Simon and I'm an alcoholic... Oops, hang on, wrong group :-)

My Name is Simon, and have recently got back into star gazing in a small way.

As a precocious kid I was very into it, and my parents bought me a 60X60

refractor - that would have been in around 1971. And I thought it was the

mutts!

The moon was about the only thing you could see much detail through it, and I

seem to remember seeing a moon or two on Jupiter. It helped that in those days,

the street lights went out about 10:30 (I can't imagine why they don't now) and

we lived in the middle of nowhere in rural Shropshire.

Fast forward a few years, and I'm now living in Burbage, near Hinckley and have

just bought a scope a couple of weeks ago to start looking at the heavens again.

Have two small daughters - aged 3 and 18 months, and in time it will be nice to

show them a few of the marvels.

Went out and bought a Celestron 130eq with motor drive. Probably wasted my

money, but I thought for £159 it's almost a disposable scope - and hopefully

will do as a starter. It seems to work reasonably well - did check the

collimation when I got it, and tweaked slightly.

I did a little research (probably not enough) and this scope seemed to get good

reviews for its parabolic mirror, just the supplied eyepieces are not of the finest

quality!

This weekend on Sunday night got decent view of Jupiter, with all four moons

about 11:00 PM - earlier in the evening the waxing moon was sheathed behind

wispy clouds, but it was nice to see the detail again - I've currently got the

two eyepieces that came with the scope, a 20mm erecting eyepiece and 10mm

'normal'. The 10mm gives about 65X magnification on this OTA.

I've ordered a better quality (I hope) 6.5mm eyepiece and hopefully that will

come before the weekend. Even if the scope isn't great, the eyepieces, if bought

sensibly will work on the next, better scope!

Also keen on trying a T mount in conjunction with my Canon 5D camera. But that

can wait until I get the hang of using the GEQ mount more successfully! I've

only just twigged that instead of breathing in and hanging from the shed roof to

see into the eyepiece, when crossing the meridian, just rotate the scope in its

mount!

So that's me - I'm here to learn!

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Biggazza88

Biggazza88

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Posted

Hi Simon welcome!

Iv got a 130eq without the motor drives and as a starter scope it's more then good enough! I'm sure u will hear at some point that the spotting scope is pants, and it really is!! But get a low power EP and use that to locate things and you're off!

Have fun mate :)

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Simes

Simes

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Hi Simon welcome!

Iv got a 130eq without the motor drives and as a starter scope it's more then good enough! I'm sure u will hear at some point that the spotting scope is pants, and it really is!! But get a low power EP and use that to locate things and you're off!

Have fun mate :)

Cheers.

I actuly found the spotter intuitive to use. Found Jupiter and centred it in a few seconds.

It's going to be rubbish for things a lot dimmer I suppose.

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