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First light on a poor night


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Set out to give my new scope a tryout last night. Jupiter was the first thing visible in the sky, and I tried it out with my 32mm plossl in place to begin with (30x) and found it a little difficult to resolve Jupiter into a disk. It is fairly low in the sky now, and wanted to wiggle a bit. At higher magnification it resolved into a disk, but it was difficult to make out anything on the disk, and I could only see one of the moons. I thought at first that this was because of the carpy sky conditions, but it turns out that Ganymede and Io were sitting almost together at the right, and Europa was on or behind the disk. Callisto was way over to the left, and I did catch glimpses of it, although the sky wasn't fully dark.

I put in the 5mm (200x) ep, and could see markings on the disk, but decided that with Jupiter being this low in the sky, I was asking a bit much of the scope to produce a clear picture in the bad transparency and general murk. I could definitely see bands on the disk, and it bodes well for next year's viewing.

I quickly decided that I can't go much longer without a diagonal. It was difficult to get my head into a position to see Jupiter, even while sitting on a low stool.

I had got a 7x50 RA, correct image finder earlier in the day, and put it on this scope, although I got it for my C6N. The finder turned out to be a joy to use, with a nice sharp picture, and easy to align with the scope. I have ordered a red-dot finder for this scope, though. I may just have to go with a RA finder for this one, especially for objects overhead, as I will explain in a minute.

I went inside for a while to await the rising of the moon, as it was impossible to see any but a few stars in these impossibly untransparent skies. I could not see any stars in the north at all, and only Vega overhead.

When I put the scope on the moon, it took me a while to get down to it, because even with the tripod as high as it would go, I had to kneel on the wet grass and lean on the stool to get my eye down to where I could see through the eyepiece. The view of the moon was excellent, considering it was a full moon. I was looking at first with an 18mm Ortho, and switched to my 12mm X-Cel, then to my 32mm Plossl. The views were all about equivalent, with a little better contrast in the Ortho, I think. There was a little violet fringing around the moon, but it was not distracting, and I even found it a pleasant frame to put the moon in.

I put in a green filter to cut the light down, and found it enhanced the highlands very nicely, and made Tycho much more clearly defined. It also made the violet fringe disappear.

I switched to an orange (#25) filter, and it brought out the Maria like nobody's business. I forgot about the wet grass for a while, and just roamed about the moon's surface. The views of the moon through this scope were truly stunning.

Cant wait now to get out in some clear skies and see how it performs on doubles and clusters. Definitely need that diagonal, though.

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Nice report WH. If you have a RA finder you might find that it has a standard 1.25" diagonal.... They usually have a grub screw keeping the diagonal in that can be undone with an allen key/hex key. If yours is this sort you can steal the diagonal from the finder and use it in your scope until you get another.

The 4" f/9.5 shouldn't have too much false colour but if you buy a finge killer filter you can put it in your diagonal (that you have yet to get) and then forget about it. You should find that the purple goes away.

I look forward to more reports!

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