First light report - Celestron C6-SGT

[ian_d]

Well, after many moons' worth of feeding my astronomy habit down the double barrels of a pair of 10x50 bins, I finally took the plunge and bought myself a telescope - a shiny new Celestron C6-SGT. It arrived yesterday, courtesy of First Light Optics - here's a brief summary of how I got on...

By 10am the excitingly large and heavy cardboard boxes had all arrived, and I set about the task of putting the tripod, mount and scope together in the living room. Everything was delivered exactly as promised, no missing bits and all in perfect nick. After some careful reading of the manual (learning style = reflector-theorist, and no mistake!) I got the scope firmly affixed to the mount, and looking like it does in the glossy brochure - I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it all was. Here's a snap of how things looked by about lunchtime:

(click to enlarge)

So far, so good. Now all I needed was a clear night, but the weather forecast wasn't promising...

...but - incredibly enough - by about 8pm we had clear skies! So, the real fun could begin - setting up outdoors in the dark, and actually turning the GOTO bits on. First up - polar alignment (the C6-SGT comes on the CG-5 German EQ mount), which to be frank I fudged by just getting Polaris somewhere in the polar finderscope. Next up - switch it all on. Flicked the switch....and numerous whirrings and messages on the hand controller all looked good. Now, auto-alignment (a frequent source of trouble for newbies, as I understand it!). Again, just followed the instructions and the scope suggested three or four alignment stars, which it duly got pretty close to and which I finessed through the finderscope (which I hadn't actually aligned with the main scope!) Anyway, all seemed to be well, so off came the dust cap and the hunt was on for my first real object - M42.

Paged it into the hand control, and off the scope went (slewed pretty quickly, and not sooo noisy either - having read other reviews I was half expecting a pneumatic drill-like racket, but it was pretty civilised really!) Up popped M42 in the finderscope - result! Unsurprisingly it wasn't in the main view (like I said, hadn't aligned the two up) but a bit of manual searching soon revealed the target - and great it was too, a clearly visible cloud of gas with the Trapezium as clear as a bell, dead centre. And thought it only existed in books!

At this point I was feeling pretty chuffed with myself, as I hadn't really expected to be bagging nebulae within 12hrs of receiving my first proper bit of kit! It got better too - moved on to find Mars (not much to see, but a definite salmon-pink disc), Saturn (awesome sight at higher power - rings clear as a bell, and could see Titan and Rhea too!!) and finally the Moon (brilliant at all the powers I have - I got the Revelation Eyepiece Set as well). Things were so good, in fact, I got my wife to come and take a look at Saturn, who was duly impressed!

So, all in all a fantastic start to my new observing career. A few things I will need to sort out are:

- aligning the finderscope with the main scope (should be pretty easy - can just point to a bright star and get them in agreement)

- more accurate polar alignment (haven't worked out how to use the RA setting circles to do this yet, the manual remains strangely silent on the subject!!)

But overall I think I am going to be very happy with my new purchase. And huge thanks to First Light Optics for brilliant service all round, by the way! :thumbup:

Successful first light within 12hrs - can anyone beat that for a first go?!

cheers

Ian

(click to enlarge)

[MartinB]

A very enjoyable read Ian. What a great first night. Sounds like your reflector theorist style worked well for you. Lots of good targets for you to go for now. The globular clusters are starting to appear - M3 is now up at a civilised our and well worth a peep. 3 lovely open clusters in Auriga and the double cluster between perseus is still around in the early evening. M81 and 82 are worth hunting at low power to see if you can get them both in the EP at the same time.

Keep us posted Ian. Sounds like you are well on track with your new set up

[A McEwan]

Hi Ian,

Sounds wonderful! It's great to have a First Light so soon after arrival, and everything works too - always a bonus! Glad to see in the pic that you used a dew shield: they're essential with Maks and SCT's in our climate. Polar alignment will not be too much of a challenge for you, going by your experiences so far. Simply set the latitude on the mount to the latitude of your observing location, set up and point the MOUNT north with the telescope set up as in your first picture. Polaris should be in the finderscope (once aligned with main tube). Then to tweak it to the centre of the eyepiece field of view just adjust the MOUNT left/right and up/down adjustment knobs (manually - on mount, not handset) and that's it done. Won't take long and will get quicker each time you do it.

Enjoy your wonderful new telescope!

AM

[jgs001]

Ian, great report. Good job on getting it all set up. I hope you get lots of pleasure from it.

[dogfish]

Hi Ian,

Nice report. Reckon you're really going to enjoy that bit of kit.

One quick bit of advice, align the finderscope and the main tube in daylight using a terrestial feature (chimneys, electricity pylon etc) as far in the distance as you can get (making sure you're not pointing anywhere near the sun, of course). You'll find it a lot easier than doing it with a star as it's too easy to centre one star in the finder and a completely different one in the OTA

Keep us updated with you progress.

Cheers, Martin

[jollyjack]

Ian, am seriously considering one of those myself, maybe without the go to. How did you find the portability of the complete set up? Also, how does the finderscope perform, is it a 6x30?

Paul

[Sam]

Nice scope - and a great report! You're going to have a lot of fun with that!

[ian_d]

Ian, am seriously considering one of those myself, maybe without the go to. How did you find the portability of the complete set up? Also, how does the finderscope perform, is it a 6x30?

Paul

It's pretty good in terms of portability - takes me about 15mins to set up from a standing start (have to store it all packed away in boxes due to lack of space), and that includes polar alignment of the mount. All very manageable in terms of weight etc too - nothing individually too heavy (although quite hard to lift when it's all put together!)

Finderscope is 6x30 and performs just fine.

Based on my experiences so far I'd heartily recommend this set-up - has given me great views of planets, moon, DSOs, the lot!

[WebSentinel]

Hi Ian,

Very nice scope!

The CG-5 is a Vixen GPE clone (I've got a GC-5 non-driven version). The Company 7 website has .pdf copies of the original GPE manuals which contains better info regarding the setting circles (seems using the setting circles is becoming a dying art). Anyway, the following link will hopefully make everything clear and easy regarding how to use the polar alignment scope and setting circles.

http://www.company7.com/library/vixen/VixenNAGP_GPDX_PoleAlign+Findr.pdf

I hope this helps?

[ian_d]

Steve - that's terrifically helpful, thanks for the link! I'm keen to learn how to use the setting circles properly...GOTO is great, obviously, but there's something to be said for knowing how to do these things "the traditional way"!

cheers

Ian

[steppenwolf]

Great report, Ian - delighted to hear of someone having such a successful first light experience.

[DannyHarvey]

Just got the same kit, I enjoyed your report very much!

Dan

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Those are lovely portable scopes. I have the (much) older brother of that mount (the Vixen Great Polaris) which does not have goto. Nice and solid, and polar alignment is quite easy, I find. The SCT tubes are marvellously portable. BTW, do not let anyone tell you these scopes are best for planetary viewing: the handle DSOs for visual as well as any other scope of the same aperture. My C8 has shown me 600+ DSOs to date, and only half a dozen are too extended to fit into the FOV

Clear skies!