First light - cheep 60mm refractor

[mdstuart]

Well I bought a cheep (£20 inc postage) Chineese short focal length (350mm) refractor off ebay. For holidays and that look through the curtains at Saturn at 3am when you wake up and can't be bothered to get the big scope out.

It was new, the finder was still in the wrapper and is made by "visionking". It has two lenses and a barlow plus a finder. Quite smart looking in fact. Even has a case to put it away in and bolt cases for the eyepieces.

Expecting the worst I put the 20mm lens in and hey the stars are all points and it looks fine, mag 9 stars clearly visible. Surely the 9mm through a prism woudl not work so on to Albeiro and hey lovely colours and a great split. Then found M15, M34 and Andromeda, all fine views. My wife in fact preferred the view of Pleides in baby scope better than in the daddy scope as the traditional stars looked clearer..

So all in all a surprise, rather nice views in fact.

Will try to see what the limiting magnitute is and how good it is at spliting some closer doubles.

[beamer3.6m]

Just to hijack this thread cheap scopes can sometimes be a surprise.

I have one for sale in the Forsale section.

[Doc]

Wow you wouldn't expect that