LXD75 First Light at Last

[upahill]

Managed to get set up this evening nice and early after the repaired mount arrived. I had a couple of 'Motor Errors' which worried me a bit during testing, but after a bit of investigation I had the OTA upside down and I think it was struggling with the weight distribution. After turning it around and re-balancing I havent had any further problems.

Tonight was as much about learning how to use the scope, rather than looking for specific things. I managed to sort out the following:

1. Got the GOTO working, and aligned with 2 stars. The finder scope is out of alignment but it didnt matter so much as the GOTO was perfect, only requiring a tiny touch of readjustment, but it got every object in the FOV.

2. I managed to get stellarium connected and used it to slew to a few objects.

3. Thanks to DoctorD I had some instructions for setting up com2tcp - so had a quick go with this and it worked perfectly. SkySafari on iPad was now wirelessly controlling the scope over WiFi - without spending £149 on a SkyFi adapter! Yipee!

After it was all set up and tested I got to some observing, first had a quick look at the moon whilst the sun was setting - such an amazing sight. Very thin crescent with a red/orange glow on the surface from the setting sun. This was also the first test of the 25mm Meade MA eyepiece which gave quite a clear image. I changed to a 12mm EP and saw a lot of surface detail, and noticed for the first time the effect of 'seeing'

After dark I of course went straight for Jupiter. Very bright and pinsharp which I was glad about, couldnt see much detail with the 25mm so worked my way up through 17,12, and eventually 6mm, the last eyepiece made it quite easy to see two dark bands across the surface. It wasnt as large as I would like, but I guess thats aperture fever already The moons were impressive, think I saw 3 of them in the 6mm and incredibly pin sharp.

Over to the Orion Nebulae and again very impressive in all eyepieces. I think I would like to try a filter to try and bring out some of the detail but this particular Messier was very attractive as usual and it could be fun to try imaging it. After a few minutes of viewing and going all the way up to the 6mm again I spotted four very fine stars in the centre - very happy!

After these three easy targets I decided to try the Guided Tour feature of the Autostar, I chose a few Messiers and clusters. Clusters were very impressive, it really is odd to think that you can scan through the sky seeing just a few stars and then all of a sudden you come across a view in the finder with hundreds of stars. I saw the double double (but didnt really know what I was looking at) but a very nice view. Also managed to have a nice view of the Pleiades and about 7 main stars in the FOV with the 25mm, didnt go to any higher mags on this as it didnt seem necessary.

Some of the galaxies it took me too were less impressive than I had hoped, but I guess I am asking quite a lot of this 6" with a £50 set of eyepieces! At 25mm I could just about get most of them to focus, but any higher mags and I was struggling to get a clear view. I still need to do a proper collimation which may help but I think that realistically it is down to the lack of fine focussing control, and budget eyepieces.

All in all about 3 hours before the cold got to me too much to handle, so have come in to thaw out and write up

Looking forward to the next clear night.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice report, glad you got the setup working, and more importantly, that you got some nice objects in the field of view.