First light with Meade LX200 OTA - 18 months after purchase!

[dannybgoode]

Captain's Log Star date 21 Jan 2017 - spotted an advert of ABS for a 10" Meade LX200 OTA.  An older lady but in excellent shape.  Quick enquiry with the seller and set off for Rotherham to make the purchase.  Swing by RVO on the way back to pick up a Moonlite focusser and an Antares Lightwave 2" diagonal.  Very excited, what a monster scope - will be able to see the edge of the universe now.  This will go really nicely with my new SW AZ EQ6 GT

Captain's Log Star date 27 January 2017 - Completely failed to get new scope and mount set up.  Spent a couple of hours getting very cold and very frustrated before deciding I was going to end up breaking something - possibly me.  Decided to try again another night.

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Captain's Log Star date 17 May 2018 - Having finally unpacked all my astro gear following a house move some year and a bit ago I finally have worked out the new (well not so new now) mount having used the smaller SW 150P in the first instance - much easier to manhandle around - I mount the LX200.  Working in AZ mode to keep things simple I successfully mount the scope. Roughly aligned the Telrad and finder scope on a distant TV aerial and marvelled at an upside down blackbird.  Some detail given the distance!

Then kept then wife happy by spending an hour with her whilst the scope cooled and Jupiter decided to make an appearance.  A bit more fettling with the alignment of finders etc and time to plop in an eyepiece.  Decided to do what all the best astronomers do and slam in the shortest FL eyepiece I had to hand - pretty good.  Lots of detail but given the skies were not yet properly dark and Jupiter was still very low not the most sensible thing to do.

By now a few stars had appeared to a quick 2 star alignment and go-to is working ok.  Not perfect with a little tweaking needed to get the target in view but once centred it stayed there.  This was my time using a powered mount and wow - the convenience and freedom to just stare at the objective.  Still too much power in the EP's though.  Time to reign it in a bit.  Plonked in my 2" 24mm MaxVision.

Wow, just wow.  Never had a view of Jupiter like it.  Obviously much smaller than with the 4.9mm(!) in but just so sharp, so much contrast and such a lovely FOV.  Colour too - not masses but very discernible.  Plenty of 'depth' to the image as well - just so happy.  I can finally see the benefit of a large aperture, long focal length scope.  Can use relatively long FL's and get good mag without reaching the envelope of what the scope can manage.  That said given what I had seen though at shorter FL's in far from ideal conditions I am confident that in better nights I will be able to push to magnification up significantly.  Could have spent hours drinking in the detail.

Decided to swing round to m13.  Bearing in mind the hour and the fact I am surrounded by houses with annoyances such as security lights it was far from dark but it was still discernible.  Again, just such a nice contrasty image and had I spent a bit more time observing the detail would have come but alas it was approaching 2330 and I still had to get packed up and to bed as work beckoned the next day.

Overall really happy with my purchases and even though it took some 18 months to actually get first light on it all I am blown away by what I saw.  Can't wait for some darker nights and better views.