Telescope Reviews: Yet Another First Light

I bought Arowana's CPC 1100, and Joey said that it is customary to post a first-light report.

Joey had expertly accessorized the scope. Am impressed how 'brand-new' condition the thing is in. I'm not intentionally careless, but find it practically impossible to keep things as 'mint' as Joey had his 1100.

Here is his ad description:

18 month old CPC 1100 with Starbright XLT coating's
Fully flocked interior tube
Astro-physics 2" Visual Back
ADM Counterweight system with two weights
ADM guidescope upper rail
Feathertouch Micro Focuser
Astrozap Flexible Soft and Black Hard Dew Sheilds
Cosmic One Cat Cooler
120v Wall plug and 12v cord
Starzonia Piggyback Power Supply
Nexremote Software
2 Sets of Bob's Knobs secondary collimation thumbscrews
9x50 RA finder with bracket
New Telrad- used once

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I had got feet wet with a C102 SLT six months ago. Experimented on it a lot with modifications and enhancements. Have enjoyed the C102 and got good performance considering the price. But there are limits to what a 4" scope can pick out of the backyard light pollution.

Looked like a C11's size would reach the upper limits of my masochism. Decided a GEM mount would be too much hassle to polar align every session. For one thing, half of the year I can't even see Polaris thru the back woods. So the alt-az CPC 1100 looks close to an ideal spec.

The C102 SLT mount works nicely, but is somewhat wobbly even on the heavier stand I made. Trip over a tripod leg in the dark, realignment had to be re-done. Adjust focus, then wait several seconds for the scope to quit shaking.

The CPC 1100 seems remarkably steady. Very unlikely to get disturbed by a bump. Very little shake, even at high power.

From experience with the SLT, I had assumed that because the little SLT mount had been designed just barely strong enough to avoid falling down-- Had expected that the bigger Celestron mounts would be (obviously) stronger, but still designed according to a 'minimally adequate' engineering mindset. But the CPC 1100 tripod and mount seem very stiff-- Built to a much higher spec than 'minimally adequate to avoid falling down'.

Did a three-star alignment and it tracked great for 5 hours. A few times I'd center on a known object and click 'align' to let it replace one of the reference stars and automatically update the alignment. That is a nice feature. It seemed to keep the alignment 'spot on' over the night, but perhaps would have worked just as good without occasionally freshening the alignment.

The GOTO on the C102 SLT was pretty good, but the CPC GOTO seems more accurate. The CPC object database is much larger too. The sparser object database in the SLT is probably well matched to that smaller telescope-- Even with the stripped-down database, there are plenty of objects in the SLT database that the scope just can't see (at least in my light pollution).

Had not found many fuzzies with the C102. GOTO a messier, and study the field carefully, and see exactly... nothing.

The back yard doesn't have too many trees. It just has too little sky. Anyway, of the deepsky objects not obstructed by trees, every GOTO yielded something recognizable.

The sky must have been pretty steady. Views were not real 'wavy'. The 1100 was tolerating pretty high magnification. Was watching M3 awhile at 560X, which was a pretty clear view filling the AFOV. Never even saw M3 in the C102. Not even a smudge.

I expected perhaps 300X before the view falls apart. Seeing a 'non-annoying' view above 500X was surprising. Maybe it was beginners luck, and will have to wait a long time for a repeat performance of air that steady?

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CPC 1100, C102SLT, SV F80, Meade 70 & 60 AZT
Q70 38mm, Pan24, Meade 5K 18mm UW, Axiom LX 15mm, 10mm, 7mm, Nagler 13T6, Expanse 20mm, 9mm, 6mm, BO/TMB 5mm, 2.5mm