New scope - first light with a Celestron C80 ED-R

[PeterM]

For the last couple of years I've been observing with my 60mm Meade scope on a basic altaz mount. It's done me proud and while I planned (and still plan) to upgrade to a 200p dob later this year I've had my eye out for bargain second hand scopes in the mean time. On the list was a small apo refractor so I was really pleased to see an ad on Gumtree a Celestron C80 ED-R on a CG5 mount for the bargain sum of £175.

The vendor was only about 35 miles away so I popped down on Friday evening. Bear in mind that I'm a total noob when it comes to scopes, never having even seen a GEM in the flesh, so in comparison to my existing scope which I can pick up one-handed mount and all, the CG-5 looked like an absolute behemoth of a thing. The scope looked good to me, I really had no way of judging the state of the mount and tripod but the seller seemed genuine, so I trusted him when he said it worked perfectly. He'd bought it a year ago with the plan of observing from the roof of his tower block but hadn't been allowed to (health and safety) and as he had limited views from his balcony couldn't really justify keeping it.

Someone else had been to see it before me but rejected it on the grounds that one of the slow motion shafts was bent. It wasn't, the knob was a bit wonky and needed reseating.

Got home quite late, it was cloudy out so I put it together in my sitting room just to get used to working an equatorial mount. I learnt pretty quickly to adjust the height of the tripod legs before adding the mount, scope and weights otherwise you risk being crushed when the thing starts to topple over.

Roll on Saturday night and clear skies! I headed out at around 10pm, spent around 15 minutes reassembling the scope in the dark. By this time clouds had covered Polaris so I aimed the mount roughly when I judged it to be and got down to business. I hadn't aligned the finderscope, the sky was still pretty light so I went for something really easy - Saturn.

My God it looked good! I've seen it before in my small scope but never like this and with a fantastic view of the moons against a now inky black sky. I was entranced. This thing is rock solid too. My 60mm scope is very light and portable but tends to wobble like crazy every time it's touched but with this whatever was in the FOV stayed there (with one exception - see later) even when I kicked one of the legs accidentally.

To help maximise my chances of finding Saturn in my scope I'd started off with a 16mm UWA clone EP from Astronomica (as also sold under the Moonfish etc brand) giving me 2.3 degrees of loveliness and x38 mag. I panned around a bit just taking in the pin point stars against the night sky and getting used to the GEM.

Back to Saturn. I'd just bought a used Orion Shorty Plus barlow from the forum (thanks Demonperformer) and I dropped it in.

Saturn just looked even more beautiful and as I was now feeling more confident moved to a 6mm TS Planetary EP (x100 mag but still with a 0.6 degree fov). The step up from the Meade 9mm MA EP I've been using for planets was immense and I thought I'd take a chance and put in the barlow. Saturn still looked great but with x200 mag I was starting to run up against limitations in either the seeing conditions, the scope or maybe just my eyeball. Saturn was still clear and bright but would pop in and out of focus ever so slightly. I know this isn't a planetary scope so it's perhaps a little unfair to expect it to cope with this kind of thing but the focuser really is the weak spot of this scope. It's quite stiff (although the scope is barely used - will this improve with time?) and at very high magnification the view shifts noticeably when refocused. Nothing I can't cope with though but something to bear in mind.

The scope is fantastic and I'm so pleased with it and am looking forward to many enjoyable observing sessions. It's a testament to the view that I suddenly realised it was midnight and I'd spent nearly 90 minutes just looking at Saturn.

[Catanonia]

Nice one, new toys are the buzz and I often peer at saturn with my 120 refractor for a bit of gazing.