First Light

[NessieHunter]

Managed to get my scope out for the first time and thought I would share my experiences with you. I'm a complete newbie although I did have a Tasco 60mm refractor 30 years ago on an alt-az mount which could see absolutely nothing and gave up almost as soon as I had begun.

During the day had set everything up and aligned the finder only to find the whole thing moving almost immediately. The thread for the tightening bolt was threaded (Bought this second hand off fleabay and to be honest dont think it had ever been outside). My dad is bringing a tap and die set over but a small strip of cloth inside the thread allowed it to hold in the meantime.

Being in the North of Scotland we are dark by about 7pm. Put the equipment out at twenty to seven, a Skymax Pro 150 on an eq3-2, to cool down. Weather conditions were far from ideal, a bank of cloud East to West and South and some wispy cloud to the North with a full moon starting to rise.

Patience is a virtue and I have none so instead of letting everything cool down properly wanted to get started asap. First off tried polar aligning using the polarscope. This is where my first issue came. I could not see anything through the scope, any suggestions welcome there. As the clouds were only allowing views to the North I thought I would test the optics. I chose Merak and manually positioned the scope with the finder to see nothing in the scope. After a bit of searching got it centred in the FOV and then realigned the finder. Finding stars after that was much simpler.

I moved the scope around getting used to the logistics of pointing it where I wanted, not as straight forward as an alt az!

The eyepiece supplied was a 28mm 2" giving X64 mag. This was extremely comfortable to use and after my experiences many years ago having a 6 inch aperture and relatively low power keeping the object in the fov was very easy. Now the scope had cooled down properly the stars were pin sharp pretty much all the way to the edge. I had also bought a meade 12mm 1.25 eyepiece for £6 on the assumption that if it was no good, it didn't exactly break the bank. Eye relief was not as good and focusing was more difficult due to vibration from the mount. I knew when I bought this that the mount probably wasn't up to the task of the 150 Pro but after being a member and reading this forum for months I decided that I had to start somewhere and the mount is going to have to be upgraded sooner rather than later.

Conclusions:

Let the scope cool down like everyone on here tells you!

I know absolutely nothing about the night sky and need Turn left at Orion right now.

Need some advice on polar aligning with a polarscope as I couldn't see anything.

The scope is fantastic pin sharp and very easy to use.

To get the magnification this scope deserves I need to upgrade the mount.

My wife has just become an astronomy widow!

Neil

Neil

[BAZ Senior]

Sorry the finder scope's being a bit dicky, but Dad may be able to sort that out.

Try downloading Stellarium, it's a free programme, and is really useful for finding/identifying objects, and planning what you may want to observe through the night.

Stellarium

[sxinias]

Congratulations on your first light. Polar alignment. Generally you need to rotate the scope 90 degrees in declination to see through the alignment port. without a polar scope, about the best you can do is center Polaris in the opening. This is more than good enough for viewing.

[NessieHunter]

Thanks for the replies guys. I'll try rotating the dec through 90 degrees although there didn't seem to be any obstruction through the finder. I couldn't make out any markings on the polar scope or see any stars to do the alignment. I tried shining a light off to one side which then let me see markings but no stars. To be honest, with the clouds about at the time I didn't take too long as I wanted to test the scope. I'll try again next time. Unfortunately I work away during the week so hopefully there will be some seeing next weekend.

Many thanks

Neil