Finally - First Light on My TS 130mm F/7 Rafractor

[gunfighter48]

Well after more than a month I finally got first light tonight on my TS 130mm F/7 scope with the 3.7" focuser.   The sky gods figured they had punished me enough!! We had rain late last night/early this morning.It was partly cloudy all day and about 5:00pm it started to clear off!! By 7:00pm all the clouds were gone!!!!! 

Took my iEQ45 Pro mount out to the back patio and set it up. Mounted the scope and balanced it. Aligned the finder scope with the main scope. Then put a scope cover over it to keep some cotton wood fluff from getting on it. (Should have left the cover off.)  Made my dinner and by 10:00pm it was dark enough to go see what the scope could do. Jupiter was high in the SW sky so told the mount to go to Jupiter and it got fairly close considering that I didn't do a polar alignment! I just wanted to get a look thru the scope before any clouds came back. The first thing I noticed was the tube hadn't got down to thermal equilibrium. I should have left the cover off the scope so it would have cooled off faster! Got Jupiter centered in the ES 24mm 82° eyepiece and then switched to a 14mm eyepiece and re-centered the  image again. Then put in my 8.8° eyepiece and told the mount to sync to the image. The iEQ45 Pro tracks extremely well!. By this time the scope was getting closer to equilibrium. The details on Jupiter were better than those that I had gotten with my ES 102mm APO several months ago with excellent seeing conditions. Given my zone 9 skies it was doing great. I usually see a gray background but tonight it was a very dark gray/black background. As time went on it got blacker. Contrast was excellent. I could see the equatorial belts and one temperate belt on Jupiter. Seeing wasn't great and details would pop in and out depending on the seeing conditions. All the moons were visible and they showed dots of varying size and slight color variation!!  You could tell they were moons and not stars. I got to try out my 5mm Starguider eyepiece that I bought 4 months ago. It was very close to the same detail level as my ES 4.7mm eyepiece. Not bad for a $60.00 eyepiece!

Arcturus was fairly high in the sky so went to it to see if any CA showed up. There was no CA anywhere around Arcturus. There was some thermal turbulence in the sky and that caused some shimmering of the image. I used my 4.7mm eyepiece and defocused inside and outside of focus. The rings were all round and concentric, the scope calibration is perfect. I looked at several other stars and they were perfect tight dots.

Mechanically the scope is excellent. The focuser is smooth with no tight or binding spots and the 11 - 1 reduction is very smooth. The focuser rotates smoothly with a little tightness in a few spots but that should disappear with some usage!!  All in all I'm very pleased with the scope and it was well worth the price. Speaking of which, I was looking over the receipt that I got with the scope. When I bought it the price was listed at 2432 euros. The .79 reducer/flattener was listed at 289 euros. I noticed that on the receipt it said a total of 2430 euros total with shipping. They had given me the sale price that wasn't listed at that time in the ad!!  So it was an even better deal than I had first thought.

Edited May 10, 2016 by gunfighter48

[laudropb]

Very nice report on a great piece of kit.

[gunfighter48]

On 5/10/2016 at 02:29, gunfighter48 said:

Well after more than a month I finally got first light tonight on my TS 130mm F/7 scope with the 3.7" focuser.   The sky gods figured they had punished me enough!! We had rain late last night/early this morning.It was partly cloudy all day and about 5:00pm it started to clear off!! By 7:00pm all the clouds were gone!!!!! 

Took my iEQ45 Pro mount out to the back patio and set it up. Mounted the scope and balanced it. Aligned the finder scope with the main scope. Then put a scope cover over it to keep some cotton wood fluff from getting on it. (Should have left the cover off.)  Made my dinner and by 10:00pm it was dark enough to go see what the scope could do. Jupiter was high in the SW sky so told the mount to go to Jupiter and it got fairly close considering that I didn't do a polar alignment! I just wanted to get a look thru the scope before any clouds came back. The first thing I noticed was the tube hadn't got down to thermal equilibrium. I should have left the cover off the scope so it would have cooled off faster! Got Jupiter centered in the ES 24mm 82° eyepiece and then switched to a 14mm eyepiece and re-centered the  image again. Then put in my 8.8° eyepiece and told the mount to sync to the image. The iEQ45 Pro tracks extremely well!. By this time the scope was getting closer to equilibrium. The details on Jupiter were better than those that I had gotten with my ES 102mm APO several months ago with excellent seeing conditions. Given my zone 9 skies it was doing great. I usually see a gray background but tonight it was a very dark gray/black background. As time went on it got blacker. Contrast was excellent. I could see the equatorial belts and one temperate belt on Jupiter. Seeing wasn't great and details would pop in and out depending on the seeing conditions. All the moons were visible and they showed dots of varying size and slight color variation!!  You could tell they were moons and not stars. I got to try out my 5mm Starguider eyepiece that I bought 4 months ago. It was very close to the same detail level as my ES 4.7mm eyepiece. Not bad for a $60.00 eyepiece!

Arcturus was fairly high in the sky so went to it to see if any CA showed up. There was no CA anywhere around Arcturus. There was some thermal turbulence in the sky and that caused some shimmering of the image. I used my 4.7mm eyepiece and defocused inside and outside of focus. The rings were all round and concentric, the scope calibration is perfect. I looked at several other stars and they were perfect tight dots.

Mechanically the scope is excellent. The focuser is smooth with no tight or binding spots and the 11 - 1 reduction is very smooth. The focuser rotates smoothly with a little tightness in a few spots but that should disappear with some usage!!  All in all I'm very pleased with the scope and it was well worth the price. Speaking of which, I was looking over the receipt that I got with the scope. When I bought it the price was listed at 2432 euros. The .79 reducer/flattener was listed at 289 euros. I noticed that on the receipt it said a total of 2430 euros total with shipping. They had given me the sale price that wasn't listed at that time in the ad!!  So it was an even better deal than I had first thought.

The focuser reduction drive is actually 10-1 not 11-1. My old eyes lie to me at times!!!