Taming the Blue Penguin

[Nyctimene]

Hello,

last night I was out with my recently acquired scope-a Skywatcher Infinity 76, that I found in mint condition and well collimated on ebay for just 15 €.

It's a scope designed for children, who will love the design; it looks like a strange crossover breed between a space shuttle and a pregnant pinguin,

so my wife named it "The Blue Penguin". It came with an erecting eyepiece of 10mm f.l., giving with the 76/300 parabolic primary a magnification of 30x

and a TFOV of 1,26 degrees (AFOV narrow at 40°). I ordered an additional 20mm eyepiece for 15x and a TFOV of about 3°.

The Penguin had shown crisp pictures of moon formations  a few days ago; so I went to some deep sky-objects. Conditions were at the average; faintest star 5.5 mag, SQM-L 21.0. First  a look at M 42; a bit dim compared with the side-by-side built up 8" f/4 Hofheim Dob. But the structures were readily visible, and I could make out three of the Trapezium stars (A,C and D) at 30x.

The three Auriga-Messiers M 36,37,38 were easily resolved. oc 1907 was small, but distinctive. Contrasting was the richer open cluster 1893, forming a "Y" pattern of four 8 mag stars. The background nebula  IC 410 could only be seen in the 8" with UHC-filter  and indirect vision. M 35 and its small companion oc 2158 gave a nice sight.

Over to Coma Berenices. Gx 4494 (9.8 mag) could be seen with indirect vision for about 50% of the time. The needle of gx 4565 was too dim; perhaps the eyepiece was somewhat fogged up.

So, the optics are quite fine. The major drawbacks are two: finding an object and changing the eyepieces.

The Penguin has no red dot finder or comparable device, so you have to rely on star hopping. Whilst this is not a big problem for an experienced observer,

I guess that it is a real hassle for a novice, who will therefore be limited to the moon and some very conspicuous DSO's (M 45 e.g.) But if it kindles an interest, it's ok. Why are these optics not available in the Firstscope and it's clones?

Tracking is not easy, but can be learned - you grab wings and body of the Penguin. The eyepieces are threaded helically as a substitute for a real focuser, so changing them in the dark is somewhat awkward, as is the flip from the inverted Newtonian image at lower mag to the RACI - image at higher mag (vice versa to the usual configuration.

So, some more taming is needed. But, all in all, a fine winter night with moaning owls, foxes "barking" (is that correct?-) and the usual accompanying cat.

Very pleased and saturated, and so to bed.

Thanks for reading.

Stephan