New Scope :-)

[davedownsouth]

Took my first steps towards DSO imaging yesterday by buying an 80MM F6 SUPER ED TRIPLET APO 80/480 ALTAIR WAVE SERIES and a 10X60MM FINDER SCOPE.  I know that the more important part is the mount, and I have put an order in for the new IEQ45 mount when it gets released later this summer, so hopefully when it starts to get dark again, I will be all set  .  

In the meantime, I have just removed my Nexstar 8SE scope from it's mount and set up the refractor on it, along with the finder scope.  The finder scope was a sync to set-up and I had it aligned with the scope and the TV arial down the street in ~ two minutes .  If I get any clear skies tonight I will fine-tune this on Jupiter.  I am hoping that I will be able to carry out a manual two star alignment using the Nexstar mount and use the goto function with a different scope attached, this should be okay shouldn't it?  I will then start by taking a few shot of the moon, which will hopefully fit in the FOV, but I have bought a cheap 0.5 focal reducer for the camera if it does not.  If this works okay, I will then give some of the brighter Messiers a try with very short exposures, but I know I will probably have to wait for the new mount before I do this properly.  The weather is looking promising later this week, so fingers crossed I can get out and take some pictures 

[bruno]

The weather is supposed to be getting better for mid week, well done on your excellent purchase

[leemanley]

any pics of new gear, always love to see nice shiny new stuff !
 

[davedownsouth]

any pics of new gear, always love to see nice shiny new stuff !

I will try to get some taken tomorrow . 

I got it out for a short while tonight, just long enough to do a two star align, with seconds to spare before the cloud obscured the stars, and I then just managed to get the moon into focus with the camera on before the clouds took that target away as well; did not even manage to get one shot off . 

Couple of quick comments from the very short play I had with it:-

1.  The refractor is alot more stable / easier to handle than the 8SE; even in the howling gale (well, maybe a slight exaggeration), there was hardly any movement of the image on the screen; with the 8SE the moon would have been bouncing about.

2.  The focusing action is soooooo different from the 8SE.  With the 8SE, swapping eye pieces / filter wheels / barlows needs a few turns on the focuser to get things back into focus, with the 80MM  ED Triplet with just an eye piece plugged straight into the end of the scope (no diagonal), I had to insert a 50mm separator (or what ever the extension bit is call) to be able to get the moon into focus.  Swapping to the camera, I had to turn things alot to get focus, and when I added the filter wheel and moon filter (ref point 3) onto the end of the camera, I had to take the separator back off to get focus.  I assume this is normal with a refractor, but it is a bit of a pain in the butt .

3.  It is soooo bright.  I needed to add a 0.5 reducer to get the whole of the moon on the screen with the camera, and doing this I had the exposure set to 1ms, and the gain set to it's lowest possible value, and it was still too over exposed to be able to see the craters.  When I added a moon filter, I could get the craters into focus (just), with the exposure set to 2ms and the gain set too minimum.  I may need a stronger moon filter .

Even though I was frustrated by the clouds, it was still good evening and I am very much looking forward to my next night out, hopefully with clearer skies and less wind .

[Pete Presland]

the slippery slope to many nights astroimaging hell whoops i mean fun