New Celestron 9.25 CF .

[Brian Nordstrom]

Hi all , just thought I would show off my nice new ( to me anyway ) Celestron C9.25 carbon fibre OTA .

I got it second hand from a lady in NSW Australia for a good price .

It arrived here in Perth WA after 7 days crossing the huge continent of Australia .

It arrived in perfect condition , even the columination was spot on , impressive ! .

I had it out last night for the first time and mounted on my HEQ5 its a great set up , quite easily moved as a unit , heavy but manageable .

I started with Jupiter and using my 27mm Panoptic , 67x and I was treated to a very sharp view of the planet with 2 moons either side and a sprinkling of stars in the back ground , nice . lots of detail seen on the planets face .

Upping the power to 147x with a 16mm nagler the image improved lots , festoons , dark spots ( sausages ) easily seen , very , very nice ! .

I went to 240x with a 10mm Radian but the seeing was not the best , the scope was only idiling along at this power , but the sky was not ! , so back to 147 and stayed there .

On to M42 at 67x and it was huge and very bright , 'E' and 'F' stars easily seen in the trapezium , another 'knock your sox off view' , these Starbright XLT coatings really work .

Later on I resolved Omega Centarui and 47 Tuk to their cores and seen the 'Pup' for the first time beside Sirius awesome stuff , man this 9.25 performs .

I like the set up solid and sexy , here is a few photos and I hope you all enjoy .

Brian .

[brantuk]

Very nice Brian. I just love those 9.25's - they really hit a sweet spot for planetary work and the coatings and configuration make them a gem in anyone's collection. Smashing set up that'll give you years of great astronomy - congrats!!

[sbooder]

Nice scope but what on earth do they use to pack scopes in Aus, it certainly isn't clouds judging by your pics?  Maybe we in the Northern Hemisphere should start ordering our kit from down under?

[baggywrinkle]

Nice..where are you in Perth?..I lived in Clarkson for 4.5 years.

Have you made contact with AGWA?  Nice obsy site up in the hills at Chittering and a great bunch of people.

[baggywrinkle]

BTW that is a beast!

[Pete Presland]

Cracking scope, I love mine. Just one question what is that blue stuff above your head?

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

[Joguj]

Nice. I'm just a little bit envious of those cloudless blue skies. Do you want any lodgers? I'm very quiet and well behaved and would even sleep in the shed.

[Mondlicht13]

Hi Brian

Welcome to the Celestron C9.25 Owners Club 

Truly great piece of kit. Love mine.

Couldn't send us a few of those beautiful skies could you mate    

Cheers

Mike    :clouds1: :clouds1:

[cotterless45]

Is that blue sky ?

I remember blue sky,

Nick.

[Mondlicht13]

You've got a long memory Nick 

Mike

[Naemeth]

Congrats on the new scope Brian

Is that blue sky ?


I remember blue sky,
Nick.

I remember some in December / early January  . 

[Joves]

Nice one Brian. I think I saw this for sale on IIS. If it's the same one, it struck me as a pretty darn good deal.

Glad it arrived safe and has lived up to expectations so far!

[Brian Nordstrom]

Thanks every one , yes it is a very nice visual scope .

I had it out again last night / this morning and saw Saturn and Mars , as usual Saturn was beautiful but Mars really struck me as just AWSOME !! , dark markings easily seen and my word has it not growen over the last few months ? can wait for it to get at its closest in march , will be nice .

Sorry about the blue skies mate's but yes its been just perfect here now for a while and we hope it will continue for some time soon .

Bunnygod1 , Monditch13 and branuk , I am proud to be the owner and now C9.25 scope member ,,, LOL .

Baggywrinkle , I have been up to the Perth observatory and know Peter K ( ex director ) very well but it is closed at the moment pending funds from the local council for a bit of up keep , shame as they are dragging the chain on this .

Joves , yes it is the same one that was in IIS , and yes mate a great buy for a lot of scope .

Every one else , thank you so here is one more for the road .

I can see this scope really growing on me , I like it a lot .

Brian.

[baggywrinkle]

The AGWA group are very active and the site they have access to in Chittering is not the Perth Obsy site. This one is part ofa citrus farm above Bullsbrook.

Boy do I miss those clear skies,....

[Brian Nordstrom]

Ok , thanks for that babbywrinkle I bave met Keith at BOTW , he is a great guy and driven passed the chittering road so I know where they are .

I am having a star party tonight with a few Perth amateurs , looking forward to showing the C9.25 off and getting together .

Brian.

[baggywrinkle]

Yes I know about that as I am in touch with AGWA using Facebook. Enjoy the Star Party

Keith is a straight up bloke, I bought my 6SE and SW80ED & mount from him, cut me a good deal too. 

There are some amazing imagers in AGWA too, stunning photography and they have time to help the novice too.

[ollypenrice]

You must have good seeing as well, Brian, to get the extra Trap stars and the Pup. Very impressive!

Olly

[todd8137]

Nice scope planet killer with bar lows and clear skies

Pat

[Brian Nordstrom]

Thanks again guys , and Olly last night we did a side by side comparisim with a friends C8 XLT and my C9.25 XLT and I have to say the C9.25 just ate the C8 in every way , better star images , F and G easily seen in the C9 , only F seen in the C8 .

Eyepieces used were my 16mm nagler T2 at 146x in the C9.25 and 13mm Ethos at 153x in the C8 , we used this combo most of the night except a few deep sky objects where I used my Celestron Axium LX 31mm , 82* for 76x and Peter used his wonderful Ethos 21mm ,100* at 95x .

Diagonals were TelVue MaxBright 2 inch in the C8 and generic GSO Dielectric 2 inch in my C9.25 so in all ways the C8 should have had the edge sharpness wise using the better ( newer ? ) eyepeices and diagonal .

M42 showed way better contrast as did the Trantula nebular in the LMC , there was no comparisim on Jupiter's surface and we could see a moon traverse the face all night ( callisto ? ) easily in the C9.25 but was basically invisable in the C8 ( without seeing it first in the larger scope you would not see it in the smaller one ) .

Mars was better as well , the polar cap easily seen in the C9.25 and only hinted at in the C8 .

I am not bagging the C8 at all , it was well columinated , performs brilliantly and is in the dome in the above photo full time , both scopes left for 2 hours before the test started and its GOTO's are impressivly accurate time and time again , very good scope all round but sadly not up to the C9.25's standard optically .

The C8 owner was very impressed with the way the C9.25 performed as was I and everyone else .

Its true , these C9.25's are special , ( well mine is ) and 1.25 inches seems to be a lot at this level ? .

More reports and photos soon as we are planning a dark sky night out of town in the near future while this beautiful weather holds .

Oh yes sorry about the quality of the photo's ,,, It was super clear and the sun was setting ,,, sorry...LOL .

Brian.

[mac19]

Ive gotta stop reading about these 9.25 before I end up owning one...

[Astrobug]

Enjoy your new scope!

[Brian Nordstrom]

Thanks Astrobug .

Well it was another perfect night here in Perth so we got together again last night .

Scopes were , 110 WO APO , 66mm APO , 10 and 16  inch Dob's , a C8 and my C9.25 and again I was super impressed in the views .

The moon at 200x was better than the 110mm WO fluorite APO and Jupiter in the seconds of good seeing at 150-200x looked like a photo , Io was approaching Jupiter and was seen as a small orange ball  with Ganymede and Europa together slightly further out as 2 different sized white balls , awesome stuff .

Mars was Ok but not as good as last week as the seeing deteriated to the point we had to pack up about 12.30am as Mars was getting higher but nothing was seen except a flaming red ball ,, horrible !.

Again this scope impressed me and everyone else , a keeper for sure .

Thanks for reading .

Brian.

[Brian Nordstrom]

We did our dark sky night  a few weeks ago on new noon and it was awesome .

Here is a shot  of my Istar 127nn and camping set up .

We had an lovely ES 66mm quad , WO 110 triplet  ( that's why I took the 127mm f8 achro , to do some some side by side comparisims , but that's another story)

and a 10 inch f4.5 SW  Dob with excellent mirrors , this scope is special .

2 fold out loungers to use 12x32 Bushnells , 8x32 Lensia , 10x50 Nikon and my 8x56 binoculars ,, what a night  !! .

You can see the 10 inch and 110 triplet in the previous photos .

Had a ball , super dark as we coulkd easily see 'Omega Centarui '  ,  47 Tuc and the trantular nebula in the LMC naked eye ,, really , really dark !!

As the milky way rose it became hard to see the constilatons ,, star overload .

Brian .

[Joves]

Sounds like a great time, Brian. And some nice equipment options available on the night also.

Quite envious!

[GuillermoBarrancos]

I envy your dark skies!

The only time I have seen the milky way very clearly and a dense starfield was 15 years ago in the Hautes Alpes (on a camping site in St.Crepin, between Briancon and Guillestre area) 940m above sealevel.

There the Nights were also Pitch black.