Celestron C6-N 'Halloween' Newtonian Unboxing

[Chris]

A short while ago I saw that FLO had a limited supply of C6-N 150mm 'Halloween livery' f/5 Newtonian OTA's for the very good price of just £79! So in the spirit of penny pinching, and after deciding I was in the market for a single scope which could handle both solar system and deep sky observing and imaging, I decided to go for it!  

Now, I think I may have bought one of the last of these OTA's available singularly, as I can no longer see them on the FLO clearence section. However, these C6-N's are one of the choices for the Celestron AVX mount packages, so maybe the following unboxing pictures will be of interest to anyone considering the package in the link below:

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/advanced-vx-goto/celestron-c6-n-newtonian-vx-goto.html  

[Chris]

My thanks to FLO for their usual brilliant service, ordered yesterday and arrived today

Now for £79 pounds I really can't expect a lot, and of course for that kind of money the scope was only ever going to ship with a basic 1.25" focuser. After a quick examination it is metal and feels more solid than it looks. It also appears to have an integrated thread for attaching a DLSR via a T-ring. I think vignetting would be a real issue for AP-C sized DLSR sensors on this focuser, but for PlanetaryLunar imaging with a webcam, and DSO imaging with a small chipped CCD I can't predict too many problems if the camera is light.

For observing it comes with a Plossl of all things, absolutely great! it may not win the best dressed Plossl award, but it's an actual Plossl! I personally much prefer one Plossl eyepiece compared to the usual 2x modified achromat eyepieces Synta scopes often ship with. I'm pleased about that

To be continued once I've had a better look at things.....  

 

Oh, and any thoughts about what you can see on he pics are most welcome.

[Daniel-K]

thats tidy for £79

[CraigT82]

Pretty good for the money!  You might find you need to cut that focus tube down a bit for imaging

[Chris]

12 minutes ago, CraigT82 said:

Pretty good for the money!  You might find you need to cut that focus tube down a bit for imaging

I was also wondering about achieving focus with a camera, then I found this

http://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/info/p1530_Celestron-6---150mm--f-5-Newtonian-Telescope---optical-tube.html

 

I'm assuming they took some darn good flats for that M51 image! 

[CraigT82]

Certainly looks like a capable imaging scope!  I just meant that if your DSLR comes to focus more 'in' than 'out', you might have a big chunk of draw tube intruding into the lightpath

[Chris]

6 minutes ago, CraigT82 said:

Certainly looks like a capable imaging scope!  I just meant that if your DSLR comes to focus more 'in' than 'out', you might have a big chunk of draw tube intruding into the lightpath

Ah I see what you mean now  Yes, I could chop a bit of the draw tube and paint it matt black as well. I thought about doing that with a 130pds I owned a couple of years ago, that had a draw tube that intruded quite a bit too.

[RobertI]

That's an incredible value scope Chris, should be an excellent all rounder.  

[laudropb]

It certainly looks the part and at that price well worth a punt.

[Skyline]

That's a good scope Chris, the QC is good as well, I do admit the Halloween scheme looks the biz, especially when it comes to their scopes including their old ED scopes.

One scope I don't see much often come in the used market is the 8" version the C8N, their good as well, and they come equipped with a rack and pinion 2" focuser.

I can't remember though how big are the secondary mirrors on the C6N though, maybe 48 or 50mm and the primary with StarBright coatings (not XLT).

[Chris]

Thanks Guys  

I had first light last night and I'm pretty pleased with it. I checked the primary collimation as shipped and it was close to perfect, maybe needs a very slight tweak to get the inner circle of the defocused star bang centre, but it was very close to centre as is. 

I'm guessing the 3 tiny screws on the back of the tube are primary adjustment screws. I'm used to seeing 6 screws - 3 adjustment screws and 3 locking scews, so I guess the C6-N just has the adjustment screws. One thing I like about these 3 tiny screws is that they are set in slightly from the back of the tube, so they don't accidentally get knocked when moving the scope around.

I viewed the Moon, Jupiter and M81/82:

The Moon was really sharp, very pleasing, although I could see a slight dulling in the centre of the image from the secondary when using my ES68 24mm. I believe this is normal Newtonian behaviour with certain exit pupils. It wasn't particular distracting even so.

I used my 6mm Vixen SLV with Jupiter and it showed a fair bit of complex detail at times, when the atmosphere steadied for the odd second. I could clearly see 2 Moons either side of the pea sized disc. I could see 4 faint diffraction spikes on Jupiter, I had forgot about this effect not having used a newt for observing for quite some time. It soon got used to it and just stared through the diffraction haze like you would a bit of CA on an achro. Ignoring the diffraction spikes the views of Jupiter showed enough detail to be interesting, I could make out the GRS and the odd little feature peeling off the main bands

M81/82 - wow! Even though it was close to a full Moon I could clearly see the pair in direct vision, and M82 was a definate sharp cigar shape. I've been using small t moderate size refractors for quite some time so this was a real treat. I can't weight to view some DSO's when the Moon isn't about! 

The focuser was fine, no slop, nice solid littel R&P for the price bracket. It was quite stiff but smooth, and the focus snap was quite apparant if you turned the focuser knob very slowly. I think it will be usuable

I did want to video Jupiter, so tried to get my recent purchase of a second hand NexImage to work with my laptop, but it wouldn't recognise it when plugged into the USB  I'll have to look into getting this sorted because I think the C6-N will make a nice solar system scope for imaging. 

 

I'm also seriously thinking about picking up an Atik 16 Mono or similar to document some galaxies with this mini light bucket

 

[triton1]

Excellent report its definitely a treat not a trick(sorry my bad)who said astronomy was expensive(now I'm taking cover)

[Chris]

Puns are most welcome Jonn

[MoonNut]

On 2/19/2016 at 15:33, Chris Lock said:

th

I'm guessing the 3 tiny screws on the back of the tube are primary adjustment screws. I'm used to seeing 6 screws - 3 adjustment screws and 3 locking scews, so I guess the C6-N just has the adjustment screws. One thing I like about these 3 tiny screws is that they are set in slightly from the back of the tube, so they don't accidentally get knocked when moving the scope around.

 

The 3 screws are only holding a cover plate on, remove that and you should find 3 Phillips screws, these are the collimation adjusters, then 3 small allen drive grub screws, these are the locking screws.

[Chris]

3 hours ago, MoonNut said:

The 3 screws are only holding a cover plate on, remove that and you should find 3 Phillips screws, these are the collimation adjusters, then 3 small allen drive grub screws, these are the locking screws.

Thanks for that  having locking screws is a real bonus, plus the blank plate on the back is great because it means nothing will get disturbed during use.

Even better than I thought then

[Stu]

4 hours ago, MoonNut said:

The 3 screws are only holding a cover plate on, remove that and you should find 3 Phillips screws, these are the collimation adjusters, then 3 small allen drive grub screws, these are the locking screws.

Ah yes, I remember that. My first scope, bought about 16 years ago was a Celestron C-150HD. Very similar but (unfortunately) 1000mm focal length with a Bird-Jones design to keep the tube short. The collimation setup was exactly the same though.

Have fun with it  

[Skyline]

You could always fit a 80mm cooling fan on the back blanking plate to cool the primary down faster.

[Chris]

4 minutes ago, Skyline said:

You could always fit a 80mm cooling fan on the back blanking plate to cool the primary down faster.

Great idea, I like it! it's now on my list of mods  

[Chris]

Another thing I've found that I like: Yes it uses set screws on the focuser rather than a compression ring, but the screws are rounded and flat so they don't mark your eyepieces and camera nosepieces  

I can't imagine why some budget scopes ship with pointy focuser set screws?