Telescope Reviews: First Light Meade 6" Achro

The clouds steadily decreased as the afternoon wore on and by dusk the sky was 9/10 clear. The collimation of the finder scope that I performed was off by several degrees as I tried to sight Polaris after the tripod and mount were leveled and latitude was adjusted. No big deal there.

After aligning the mount I decided on the two star alignment and the scope slewed to within an eyepiece view of Vega and Arcturus. I centered each of the objects and proceeded with the alignment.

I slewed the scope back to Vega using the Autostar. It missed by a country mile. I then parked the scope to see where it would stop in relation to Polaris. It missed that too. Something was wrong somewhere.

After checking the polar finder, I found that the tripod had shifted and skewed all of the Go-To commands. I started again from scratch checking the level of the tripod and once again doing a polar alignment and Autostar alignment.

Things were better the second time. It slewed to within one eyepiece view of M57. That really knocked my socks off. I could acually see the donut hole in the nebula. I could not make out the center star. All I have is the 26mm eyepiece that it came with. I would have liked to try it with a 20 or a 15. Next, I slewed it to M5 and it was spot on stopping with the object dead centered on the field of view and tracking correctly. It was not as brilliant as it could have been as the moon was well up in the sky by this time. I then slewed it to M81 and it was with half an eyepiece view of stopping on it. I farted around to long to try M13. By this time it was almost to the zenith and the Autostar warned me about the slew hitting the tripod.

After a short time I couldn't really see to much more . The moon pretty well washed everything out. I slewed to several more objects but I don't really know if it made it to them or not because it was so bright outside.

I slewed back to Vega for a star test. It put it right at the edge of the field when it stopped. Not too bad I thought. I focused as sharp as I could get it. The star was a very bright pinpoint with just a hint of blue. I defocused and the disc was perfectly round. Though I didn't see anything that looked like star test pictures I have seen on the several web sites I visit. No rings or anything like that. One thing I noticed was that right at the edge of the field of view, stars were not quite in focus. Since I don't observe at the edge of the field this really doesn't matter to me but I thought I'd add it to the report.

Since the moon washed out the rest of the evening I thought I'd have a look at it since it was about the only thing left visible. It just about blinded me as I peered into the eyepiece. My God, I've never seen such detail on the moon before. Even as it was full, I could see things that made it look like a photo out of some of the books I have. I made note to check for color and I was not disappointed.

There was a very, very thin yellow ring around the limb of the moon. If you moved your head just right though, It would disappear. I also saw just a hint of blue if I looked at it just right. When I could see the blue, the yellow was gone. Like I said though, if you looked at it just right, there was no color at all. It did slew right to the moon and it was centered in the viewfinder and the eyepiece.

The focuser was smooth and effortless and it was easy to find the center. I had read reports of the focuser bouncing as the tube was drawn in and out but I experienced none of this. Dampening times were around 5-7 seconds which I can live with for now, but new legs are a future purchase. The finder scope came in very handy, unlike the smaller one on my 90mm, this one is actually useful, and is bright and clear.

I thought the fact that there were no manual controls on the scope would bother me, but to the contrary, I found the Autostar keypad to be more than adequate and much prefered over manually slewing with cable controllers or hand slewing the tube around to a new location.

Tracking each of the objects required no adjustment from the Autostar so at least I know I had a good polar alignment. I have a few things I'm going to adjust and experiment with on the optical alignment as it relates to the Autostar to get better targeting. I could not perform the tube to mount alignment as I didn't have anything far enough away to to sight on. That's why the finder scope's collimation was off. The farthest object I could sight on was only about four block away.

I'd say at this point I'm very happy and thrilled to death to have a nice telescope like this. It's not an APO, but it's the most bang for the buck in telescopes I've ever seen or used.

Can't wait until the moon disappears for a while and the sky is really dark.