Edge HD 8 - First Light

[Akiainavas]

Hi guys. So I finally decided to retire my SkyWatcher and upgraded to an Edge HD scope. 

I've been battling with that decision for many many months, trying to decide what to get, going back and forth, whether I should get a refractor, or an SCT etc. 

After all that time, and probably a hundred new gray hairs on the head, I decided to get an Edge HD SCT telescope. 

 

My reasons:

- Light and compact

- AVX Mount is incredibly portable

- Relatively large aperture

- Pretty good all-rounder

- Good for both visual and imaging sessions

- With it's longish focal length it will complement a small refractor used for wide-field photography very nicely

- Fast and easy to setup, align and use

 

Now, I imagine everyone will have their own list of priorities. Mine was like that because I have to move the scope to a dark site each time, I can't afford to have hunreds of equpment pieces and most importantly I wanted to avoid the massive logistics operation that a similar scope of other design forced me to undertake each time. The Edge HD ticked all those important for me features pretty nicely. 

 

Right. So I ordered one from FLO, even though it said delivery in 2-4 days, the scope arrived the next day - not surprising though, hats down to our friends at FLO. 

After the scope arrived I was very happy to see the size of two boxes it came with. This confirmed what I hoped for - compact and light. 

I quickly unboxed it and leafed through the manuals to get everything setup and learn all the procedures. The scope itself is very beautiful, well finished and has some healthy weight to it.

Surprisingly, I didn't have to wait for clear skies at all - I packed the scope, got into my car just a few hours later and went out to loiter on a nearby's friendly farmer's field ( after harvest so no crops have been damaged  ).

The setup was a breeze. I've done a very rough polar alignment using just my phone compas and level and pointed the mount so that Polaris was roughly in the middle lf the scope's polarfinder slot. I did not get a polarfinder scope because I wanted to test Celestron's procedures first. 

First, the two star alignment. It chose Vega and slew very closely to it. Then Altair. Then a couple of calibration stars and we were good to go. 

Andromeda Galaxy, Dumbbell Nebulae, Hercules Cluster, a couple of double stars, The Pleiades - all looked really good through the scope. I was amazed how accurate the GoTo feature is for such a quick and rough setup. 

I stared through the eyepiece for over an hour, slewing to and from different object and then decided to try and take a picture and head back home. 

Time for Celestron's Polar Alignment procedure. I slew back to Altair and followed the instructions - center the start, re-slew automatically and re-center again, adjust the mount slightly using the knobs and boom, there we are. It took less than a minute which made me very sceptical...

So I attached the camera and slewed to M27. Set my SLR to 30 seconds exposure @ISO 1600 and started the picture. 

 

 

For a single, not stacked exposure from a scope that was just roughly aligned in less than 5 minutes - I was very surprised. After taking the picture I realized I forgot to fine-focus the camera but stars seem to be pretty sharp across the entire frame. 

Just before finishing up I decided to take a quick shot of the moon, which also came out nicely.

 

 

Packing the scope back was as easy as assembling it. And having run out of hot tea I decided to head back home. 

This was a great session - very encouraging and it made me very pleased with my new scope and can recommend this setup to anyone wanting a good all-rounder with portability in mind . Now, there are months if not years of practice and fun.

Hope you guys found the time to go out as well as the skies have been suspiciously clear recently - that probably means no clear skies for at least a month but hey...

Have a great weekend everyone!

[Chris]

Great first light review. Sounds like a productive night and everything obvioulsy went very smoothly which is great. I've had the C8 Edge on an AVX set up in an obsy before I moved, best setup I ever had  

[Grotemobile]

I have got the CPC version of this. I found that the collimation

was out on my scope.  It made quite a bit of difference to my

images. Yours might be ok. Worth checking though.

[Akiainavas]

14 minutes ago, Grotemobile said:

I have got the CPC version of this. I found that the collimation

was out on my scope.  It made quite a bit of difference to my

images. Yours might be ok. Worth checking though.

I did a star test which looked fine - but then again, everything was rough and rushed so I will definitely check it in details later before jumping to any serious observing or imaging sessions  Didn't want to get too technical on my first night as this was simply to check out the setup and finishing as early ad possible to avoid zombie mode at work the next day - you know, the irrational new scope excitment haha. 

I did read some reports of people having issues with AVX so i'm really glad that everything went really smoothly for me. 

[knobby]

Nice report , welcome to the Edge/AVX club !

[Stu]

I loved my 8" EdgeHD, very nice scope. Glad you had a successful first session, sounds like the alignment routines on the AVX are very well thought out and work well.

Looking forward to hearing more reports when the clouds clear away  

[Rick_It]

Quote

Andromeda Galaxy, Dumbbell Nebulae, Hercules Cluster, a couple of double stars, The Pleiades - all looked really good through the scope. I was amazed how accurate the GoTo feature is for such a quick and rough setup. 

Hi, what eyepiece have you used for the Pleiades? Did they fit nicely in the FoV?

[Highburymark]

Congratulations on your acquisition and welcome to the unofficial Edge owners' club - they are great telescopes, particularly if they're finely collimated - looks like you've got off to a terrific start with yours.

[osbourne one-nil]

I bought one recently, half expecting not to like it but having tweaked the collimation, I love it. Stars are pinpoint across the field, false colour isn't an issue, doubles are beautiful with subtle colours picked out nicely and with a 24 or 31mm Nagler, the field of view is wide enough for most things (I do struggle with the Andromeda Galaxy, but that's about it). I'm really, really impressed, and I've not tried it on any planets or the Moon yet. The difference in light grasp between that and a 100mm refractor shouldn't surprise me, but it does. 

I'm surprised quite how much difference collimating it made. It wasn't far out but a quick tweak really snapped things into focus nicely. 

The only downside to me is the corrector plate does love to dew over. I've got an Astrozap dew shield but it's not enough so I'm going to have to get a heated version or, at least, a heated strip.

 

[garryblueboy]

Congratulations on first light I did think long about getting the edge but went with the 9.25 as I'm more visual than AP but great first light .

[kirkster501]

Great scope.  I love the views I had through one.  I have the "bog standard" C9.25 and that is a wonderful scope for visual with a long FL. Congrats on your purchase!