Swift 839 refractor

[nightfisher]

I had sort of gone of using this little scope for a while, but decided it still has a place in my collection, so i set it up last night for a quick star test, on AZ4 with 1.25 dialectric diagonal, from my house only really can look at Luna and planets, so spent a little while with mars, have to say quite impressed, got ploar ice caps and almost no false colour using 25mm 12.5mm and 6mm ortho

[A McEwan]

Good! I had good views of Mars a couple of winters ago and was surprised at how much detail could be seen.I mean, don't think for a second that it was performing like a 4-incher, but for the aperture it has it was quite surprising. After that I did some research and found that quite a few people use 60mm scopes and have set up target lists for them. If you Google "60mm observing list" you will be given some links to various pages on CN that deal with this topic. There's also a French site... I'll have to hunt around for that one...

Ant

[A McEwan]

Found it! http://60mm.free.fr/index.php?lang=en

[philj]

Glad you've sorted it Jules. The 839 should give good account of itself at higher mags. Its all down to conditions though get the wrong atmospherics and no scope will perform at its best. Ive often set up and thought collimation was off or something then the next time out its fine.

[nightfisher]

I now have a clamshell from an old scope that is a perfect fit on the 839, so i can fit it to a dove tail bar with out cable ties