The appearance is almost identical to my 100mm SkyView Pro refractor. The 100's tube rings fit the 80 perfectly, so I was able to pop the ED on my SkyView Pro mount. The dew shield fits around the objective perfectly; the 100's dew shield never quite made it all the way against the lens cell. But anyway, on to the important stuff!
I popped in my little collimation eyepiece, and as expected, the ED was out of collimation. (If you don't know by now, this scope doesn't have an adjustable lens cell.) I simply loosened the 3 screws (very slightly) attaching the focuser to the tube, wiggled the focuser until the collimation was right, and re-tightened the screws. I didn't have to use shims or anything. When I looked down the tube from the objective end just to double-check, everything appeared concentric.
Once it got dark, I brought everything outside. It's remarkable that the sky was mostly clear! There were a few clouds, but nothing that interfered with observing. I looked at Mars, and MAN was the seeing poor!! After the scope cooled down a bit & the seeing improved, I began checking out Mars with different magnifications. First of all, I didn't see a trace of chromatic aberration. I was shocked at the difference between what I saw & what I had been seeing through the 100mm achro! My top magnification is 200x; I used a University Optics 6mm Ortho with a Celestron Ultima Barlow. Mars appeared a whole lot sharper than it had through the 100mm at 200x.
I also took a look at Vega. At high powers, I did see a very, very slight trace of false color. But it certainly wasn't anything to complain about.
The Moon looked spectacular! Again, absolutely no Hendrix effect (purple haze) around it.
The Double-Double split up very cleanly. I could even make out all 4 stars at around 54x. Albireo looked beautiful, and so did Gamma Andromedae.
I glanced at the Double Cluster, but the Moon was way too bright to really see much. I also took a quick peek at the Ring Nebula. I was surprised at how well I could see it, considering I was using an 80mm instrument under a nearly full Moon! But it was pretty faint. I can't wait to see these DSOs when the Moon isn't around.
Finally, I LOVE the Crayford focuser! This thing is so smooth it seems like you could almost breathe on it to adjust the focus.
I give this little scope an A+. I can't wait to see Saturn & Jupiter through it!
