First Light for Newly Flocked SW Expl 200P

[SnakeyJ]

First night out with my newly flocked Explorer 200P and what a great way to start the New Year. The Met had been promising a break in the now familiar rain/cloud for the last four days and though I had tried not to get my hopes up to much, rose this morning to a spectacular bright and clear day. With the flocking and reassembly barely completed on Sunday evening and last night taken up by family, I had to do a bit of a rush job on the collimation this afternoon before dusk. I've either got a wonky Nexgen Laser collimator to align or need to spend a little time fine aligning the focuser/draw tube in the not too distant, but it was certainly close enough and it was already 6pm by the time I had finished and got the scope setup in the garden.

First up Jupiter at around 8pm, initially at 26mm - very bright, sharp and clear wide field with 5 moons visible in a line. Upped the magnification to a 9mm EP, bright and good banding/colour but image not terribly stable - barlowed up to 4.5mm but not great seeing/stability. I did have some trouble getting time on taget, as my six year old was desperate to have a go - staying up until 9pm. As he's not quite tall enough for the 200P/HEQ5 I was doing a fair amount of lifting and the back is now struggling.

Next up we took in M45 at 32mm and spent some time panning around the plaiades area - this EP is a standard 1.25" Celestron possel, but gave an excellent pin sharp view for 70%+ of the field. I saw more stars on this visit than any of my previous looks and at low magnification there were no apparent issues with seeing.

M33 - Triangulum Galaxy (my first look), took a little bit of finding even with the goto (rough and ready alignment), definitely something small and faintly fuzzy at 26mm, though not sure I can claim this with 100% certainty - George was not particularly impressed and getting a little cold at this stage so we had a brief break to come in and consult stellariums occular view, warm up and destroy our night vision.

M31 - Andromeda, sky not quite so clear beyond zenith tonight - but easily found and George humoured me and verified the discovery.

By this stage Orion had cleared the tall birch tree in the neighbours garden and we got a great view of M42 at 32mm, better still with the 2" 26mm SP - best view of this ever for me as it has been quite low in the sky or obscured by recent weather and that damned tree - could clearly see the bow and mouth and sure this would have imaged beautifully if the camera had arrived in time. George a little disappointed it wasn't in colour - bedtime at this point.

I went back to M42 after getting him off, though the view was not as good due to diffuse moonlight - I was all set to stay up and have a good lunar session, but unfortunately the sky was turning a little hazy/cloudy out to the SE. But before packing up I went back to Jupiter for a final peek - the seeing was not as good as earlier in the evening, despite being well up in the sky but still worth a final 15 minutes before packing everything up.

All in all an excellent and well overdue evening of visual treats and probably a first for me on M33. Not sure if the flocking has improved the visual side, but hope it will give some advantage for imaging when the kit turns up. Need to spend some time checking the collimation/focuser alignment, would also like to slip out for an evening on uninterrupted/solitary star gazing at a quieter and possibly darker location.

[perrin6]

Try telling George that his eye captured some light from the Andromeda galaxy that has been travelling for over 2 million years ! He can then go to bed knowing that light has become part of his eye (I think that's correct anyway).

[rory]

nice going jake. m33 is not an easy galaxy where l/p is about due to its surface brightness.ive never had a good view of her,just the core area. but im told from darker skies its a great object ,even with bins.

clear skies..

[SnakeyJ]

Ooops, just learned that the 5th moon of Jupiter was actually BD +20 744 - school boy error on my part, but was a great view and I got a little carried away writing it up.

[Astro Imp]

Nice report, good to see that George is keen as well, you might consider getting him a crate or something similar to stand on 'til he grows a bit.

[VigdisVZ]

Jake, good job on M33, tried it tonight in bins with the best seeing my local is likely to get. But LP destroyed it for me.

You're a real "animal" when it comes to obsing