Telescope Reviews: First Light

After 23 days of waiting my telescope finally arrived this past Thursday. Of course the weather forecast said clouds and rain until early Saturday morning.

After much debate and checking Clear Sky Chart, actually it was a 2 second decision, I set the alarm clock for 3:30am before going to bed Friday night. I figured if I was too tired I would kill the clock and roll over. But I felt more like a kid on Christmas morning than I tired man. Which is odd because I'm not a morning person and waking up 3 hours earlier than normal is not for me.

I walked downstairs and took a quick peek skyward. The view was breath-taking. It was dark. The stars were everywhere. I could even see the Milky Way going across the sky.

So grabbed my scope and out the door I went.

Since I'm normally not up at this time in the morning I was totally unfamiliar with the sky. My normal viewing is 9-11pm and I just started observing in early April with my binoculars. Anyway, after a quick collimation check I looked for the brightest object to align my finder and Telrad. There was Jupiter sitting in the south. I grabbed my 32mm EP, focused her in and WOW!! The view!! I didn't see Jupiter yet but still. The stars. They were everywhere. Sure, I have been observing with my binoculars but it just isn't the same.

After I picked up my jaw I got back to the task of alignment. It should be simple enough. You would think finding something 318 times larger than the Earth would be easy. I figured I could just point the scope in the general direction and search around a little with the eyepiece. NOT! After about 5 minutes futile searching for Jupiter it finally hit me. Aim the scope at the tip of the tree line stupid. You know what, it worked. I finally aligned up the finder and Telrad.

I slewed back to Jupiter using the Telrad and there she was with 4 moons in view, 3 to the right and 1 to the far left. I really like the Telrad. I must have sat there for 10 minutes just looking at her with the 32mm. Then I tried each eyepiece, 21mm, 17mm and 9mm and each eyepiece with the barlow. Might as well test out everything while I'm here.

The best view was with the 17mm Baader Planetarium Hyperion. The different bands were clearly visible but there wasn't alot of color. I guess this is where the filters come into play. The 9mm barlowed did give more detailed view but my inexperience with moving a dob had that planet dancing all over the place. The reversed movement is going to take some getting used to. Definitely not like the binos on a alt/az tripod.

By this time it's about an hour from sunrise and I haven't even tried any DSO's. Since I'm not yet familiar with constellations that are up I needed my charts, which of course I left inside the house. Good thing I didn't drive to an observing site.

After looking though the charts I find Scorpius is in the low southern sky. I slewed the scope between Antares and Al Niyat and moved it down about 1 degree, I'm lovin' this Telrad. I looked in the eyepiece expecting to see a faint fuzzy but instead I'm greeted with a bright tight grouping of stars. It's hard to describe the difference from viewing with binoculars and viewing with a 10" reflector with other than WOW! There so much more detail, the stars are bright and crisp, it's just a better experience. By the way, the tight grouping of stars was M4.

The next target was midway between Antares and Acrab, which is M80. It wasn't as bright and crisp as M4 but it was still impressive. If I was lucky on a good night and averted vision I might have seen it with my binos. But that's not a problem anymore.

It didn't see alot for my first time with this scope, but quality will always be over quantity.

That's it. Thanks for reading. Clear skies!