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Meade Lightbridge 16" First Light

jarbi

By jarbi
in Member Equipment Reviews

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jarbi

jarbi

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Hi Everyone,

Yesterday evening - after a day of hard working on scope mods - I had a chance to try my new lightcannon in action !

To celebrate the evening, i have invited a friend of mine from our astroclub, so we could enjoy the first views together.

I assembled the scope inside the house - it was done within 5 minutes. The truss tubes are fitted very easily and firmly, and to place the upper cage was also a nobrainer.

For an initial collimation, I took my laser collimator. This one is specially useful when adjusting the primary: I can just stay at the back side of the scope and observe the laser spot moving in the ocular opening. Finalized it with a cheshire, and then got out for cooling it down around 8:30 ( it was already -3 C outside ). My transport system worked very well ( see the other thread ).

I let the cooling fun run for about an hour, but I couldn' wait to see the sky with it !

First target was M42 - incredibly lot of nebulosity, even from my light polluted garden ! The stars where not as sharp as I am used to it on the 10" Skywatcher, but the mirror was far from beeing cooled down of course. My friend arrived in the meantime, and - in parallel - we were watching the rising Saturn with his 120mm Astrophisics on EQ6.

As the scope cooled down, I could see much better images. Stars were crisp and sharp even with the 13mm Ethos. For comparison with my known experiences, we visited some of my favourites: Double cluster, M81-82, Eskimo nebula. At midnight the Leo triplet was already up - was not great but visible, even above the airport which is 3 km-s away !

We visited M36,37,38 - never saw them so clearly before ! Around 1 AM Saturn was also high enough for the LB - was razorsharp with the Ethos. We have tried higher magnification as well, but than it looked like the primary is still not settled ( after 4 hours beeing outside ! ). During this session I have noticed two points to improve on the LB asap:

1. The shroud is hanging in the lightpath - was fixed today ( see my other post ).

2. There is no "break" on azimut, and it moves too easily. Maybe someone has an idea what to do there ?

Around 1:30 AM it was getting even colder - there was ice forming on the scope and the shroud - but the primary and secondary was still clear . We decided to call it a day, unforgettable evening !

cheers,

Janos ( very happy )

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jarbi

jarbi

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Very nice indeed. Welcome to the club.

Sounds like you're going to get bags of enjoyment out of that scope.

Must work on sorting out my shroud and the wheelbarrow handles. Don't know when though...

Andrew

Thanks Andrew,

The shroud is already sorted out in a very cheap way, you can have a look at the DIY section how did I manage to do it:

http://stargazerslounge.co.uk/showthread.php?t=75357

cheers,

Janos

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Sam

Sam

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Excellent report Janos and glad you're enjoying your new telescope. The cooling time is quite critical for the 16". I reckon mine takes about 2 hours to properly cool. The other thing that is critical is collimation, they are also pretty unforgiving on eyepieces but sounds like you've got that sorted with the ethos.

Sam

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jarbi

jarbi

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Excellent report Janos and glad you're enjoying your new telescope. The cooling time is quite critical for the 16". I reckon mine takes about 2 hours to properly cool. The other thing that is critical is collimation, they are also pretty unforgiving on eyepieces but sounds like you've got that sorted with the ethos.

Sam

Thanks lightbucket,

You mean 2 hours with the cooling fan running the whole time ? I think the delivered 8xAA battery pack cannot hold on so long, but I have a small 7Ah 12V accu for this purpose.

cheers,

Janos

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