Front porch observing...

[The Warthog]

I am getting really stir-crazy, having not had the scope out since before Christmas. It was about -17 last night, but the sky was as clear as I have seen since last winter, and the wind was much diminished since the daytime, so I decided to give my little Mak some exercise. It really was too cold to mess with the mount and a larger scope.

So, I put my 65mm Konus Mak on a cheap Soligor photo tripod, and put it on the front porch, then went inside and put on cold weather clothing. I had two targets in mind, the Moon, and M42. The Mak is a good spotting scope (I was able to identify a cormorant at a distance of nearly a kilometre last summer) but is hard to aim at celestial objects because of its 30x lowest power, and lack of a finder. First I needed to focus, of course, and getting any star in the field was nearly impossible. I tried to get Sirius in the field, but the motion of the tripod was pretty jerky, and when you let go of the handle, the tripod settled off the target. Sirius appeared as a big circle when I could see it, so I waited for the moon.

When the moon got up above the trees, I went out again and got it into the FOV. This wasn't simple, as I had to look for the glow and move towards it. The scope has a smooth tube and nothing to use for aiming. With the Moon in the FOV I achieved a very crisp focus, but at this point the zoom eyepiece was frozen solid, so it was a very crisp focus at 30x. I was impressed with the quality of the view, though, but thought it would benefit from an aperture mask as the parts away from the terminator were very washed out.

It was now late at night, and Orion had moved over to the west, directly above the corner streetlamp, which has its back to me, but still shines some light on my driveway. I managed, mostly through luck, to quickly pick up M42 and the running man. It wasn't brilliant, but it was plainly visible.

I think with a red dot finder stuck on it, and a sturdier mount, it may be a passable small scope (it's a little larger and has a longer f/l than most 60mm department store scopes) for times when I don't have a lot of time for setup or room in my luggage. A finder will also improve its performance as a birding scope, as I'll be able to find the bird before it flies away. The optical performance of the scope seems to be very good. As a scope to put out on the front porch on a cold night, it's easy to move.

[geppetto]

-17 :shock:

Blimey, that's cold

Interesting to hear about your session with the Mak WH.

I'm using my 70mm Antares Mak quite a lot now days.

I share the same frustrations as you did re getting on a target

with a wobbly tripod.

I'm toying with the idea of making a wooden tripod for mine with hopefully

some sort of slow motion device for each axis ( shout if you have any ideas)

Great little scopes 8)

Keep warm matey