New toy, er, telescope arrived! Yippee!

[Knighty2112]

After selling on my good old ST120 'frac, and getting a new Celestron 6/8 SE Goto mount I needed a smaller good quality grab and go scope that would fit on the new Goto mount too, and be nice and portable too. So on Monday I pressed the button on an Opticstar AR90S refractor to fill this roll, which arrived today.

I managed a brief view through it before clouds fully piled in tonight, and got a great nice widefield view of the Pleides on my Porta mount. Hoping to test it out more on the Celestron Goto mount over the next few days/weekend. Came with a dual speed Crayford focuser, which is rotatable, and very good quality build and optics. Not an ED no, but very good views with nice contrast too for a f5.5 scope. Nicely clear on the mount too when pointing at zenith, so should prove no problems as this only weights in at 2.3kg, so with diagonal and EP that's around 2.5kg or so.

I'll do a review of it for a proper first light soon.  

A few pics below! 

 

 

[John]

Nice looking scope

[Knighty2112]

Thanks John. Hoping the views through it will be as good too. The Pleiades looked great through my 18mm X-Cel EP, so off to a good start!  

[Knighty2112]

What a cruel night! I went out  little while ago to let the pooch out for his last tour of the garden before I hit the sack, only to see a beautiful dark blue sky with stars twinkling & Jupiter gleaming away. I checked all around the horizon and couldn't see sign any clouds anywhere, so quickly rushed inside and got the Goto mount out and set up with nice new scope, power charger plugged in, wifi set up to control the mount, and just about to do the alignment when low and behold clouds swept up from the south and covered up all my nice, beautiful deep blue sky full of stars! Sheesh!

Dont you just hate it when that happens! Grrrrrrrr........?????

[Ruud]

Congrats on that Opticstar for you new mount, Gus! Together they are nice and light, and you'll be able to make good use of that gap in the clouds once it arrives.

[John]

1 hour ago, Knighty2112 said:

....Dont you just hate it when that happens! Grrrrrrrr........?????

Yep - where do those clouds come from ? !!!!!

Never mind, there will be another good one along soon, I'm sure

[johninderby]

I had the old black tube version, the Ascension Star Sky 90, and was impressed with how good it was for an achro. Much less CA than expected. Gave some very nice sharp views. Sure you'll be very pleased with it.

           John

[Chris]

Congrats Gus, man of great taste I'd say 

Your 6SE looks a better fit for the Opticstar 90 than my 4se. I needed to remove the diagonal to slew safely. I remember thinking the 6se would be just the job  

 

[Knighty2112]

7 hours ago, Ruud said:

Congrats on that Opticstar for you new mount, Gus! Together they are nice and light, and you'll be able to make good use of that gap in the clouds once it arrives.

Thanks Rudd. I believe we are getting some high pressure over us for the weekend, so fingers crossed at some point I'll get some cloud free views!  

[Knighty2112]

3 hours ago, johninderby said:

I had the old black tube version, the Ascension Star Sky 90, and was impressed with how good it was for an achro. Much less CA than expected. Gave some very nice sharp views. Sure you'll be very pleased with it.

           John

Good to know John. The view of the Pleiades was much sharper than I expected. Not pin sharp like in my longer f8.3 or f11 'fracs,  but very nice none the less. 

[Knighty2112]

37 minutes ago, Chris Lock said:

Congrats Gus, man of great taste I'd say 

Your 6SE looks a better fit for the Opticstar 90 than my 4se. I needed to remove the diagonal to slew safely. I remember thinking the 6se would be just the job  

 

Hi Chris, I see you used the option for tube rings that I am going to go for. Did you manage to source 97mm rings, or did you pad out some 101mm tube rings, which is what I plan to do?

[Chris]

Just now, Knighty2112 said:

Hi Chris, I see you used the option for tube rings that I am going to go for. Did you manage to source 97mm rings, or did you pad out some 101mm tube rings, which is what I plan to do?

Hi Gus, they were good old 101mm rings which were padded out with sticky back foam. They worked well  

[Knighty2112]

7 minutes ago, Chris Lock said:

Hi Gus, they were good old 101mm rings which were padded out with sticky back foam. They worked well  

Thanks Chris!