Looking for a good reflector

On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:20:05 +0000, Will Wilkinson wrote:

It all arrived today courtesy of TNT - 2 LARGE rather heavy boxes and a
much smaller one with the bits and pieces in. Everything looks OK, but
it's very foggy here at the moment so first light might be a while :-(

I've been thinking about it all day so I'm glad it's arrived :-)

Got it all set up in the library at the moment. Nice and convenient as
there's a set of French windows that open onto the bit of patio that's
least affected by the local streetlights. The tripod's certainly an
impressive structure, seems superbly stable and easy to adjust as well.

I take it your wife didn't rush it up into the attic until Christmas
then :-)

The mount for my old telescope is like the Skywatcher EQ1 and it
vibrated all of the time so I was impressed by the Celestron CG-5GT.
Just wait until you have it aligned and are tracking something.

I hope the skies clear soon so I can enjoy the luxury of powered
tracking and goto rather than struggling with a small scope on a
photographic tripod (although as it's a decent Manfrotto it is nice and
stable).

I had a clear night on the day in October when my telescope arrived and
the following night but haven't had one since. I have set it up in the
bedroom window with the top sash lowered but it didn't stay clear for
long but it did give me a chance to make sure the camera worked. I want
to get the serial cable ordered so that I can see if I can run it from
Cartes du Ceil but keep forgetting about it.

I can certainly recommend Opticstar, they provided excellent pre-sales
advice without being at all pushy, even recommending going for the
Ascension EDs rather than the Celestron X-Cels as apparently they're
pretty much identical, made in the same factory and just badged
differently.

I find them very good. As a novice I had a few questions after it
arrived and they answered them very quickly. I asked them about a
powered remote focuser and they said there wasn't really much choice
and they felt they were overly expensive but would be able to obtain
them if I really wanted one. I was expecting something that fitted
under the visual base nut with a drive that slipped over the focus knob
but it seems no one does anything like that and they are all tubes that
go between the star diagonal and the visual base with the expensive and
accurate motors that are required there.

I hope you enjoy it and have better luck with clear skies than I have
had recently.

--
Regards - Rodney Pont
The from address exists but is mostly dumped,
please send any emails to the address below
e-mail ngpsm4 (at) infohitsystems (dot) ltd (dot) uk