Blog!ARU: Archive

Last October I bought one of these: an Orion USA SkyQuest XT10 Intelliscope from SCS Astro. It was ready to collect at the end of November and I drove across to Wellington to pick it up (the box it was packed in was larger than I guessed it would be and it only just fit in the Fiesta with the front passenger seat pulled forward).

I used it once or twice (first thing I looked at being the Orion Nebula) but was generally too busy with work to set aside much time for it (also couldn't get the finder-scope aligned and on the first attempt the azimuth digital axis encoder wasn't working), so when I took time off for Christmas I took it back up to Darlington. Unfortunately Darlington's skies these days are too light-polluted to see much of anything (except the police helicopter that's regularly buzzing the area near my parents'), so the Andromeda Galaxy was barely visible in the scope against the orange background.

I brought the 'scope back with me at the start of January and it sat idle in my kitchen until last night when I decided to have a look at Saturn. Unfortunately it was barely discernable due to fuzziness which was either the sky or the optics. Had another go at collimating the secondary mirror (after having previously read how to do this) as it looked to be quite out of alignment probably due to transporting it in the boot of a Fiesta for 600 miles. Collimating the secondary is a world of pain — never do this for fun, tighten a tiny allen bolt here, another there, take a look through the Chesire eyepiece, wash, rinse repeat, think you've got it, tighten the main bolt up then discover the alignment is worse than before, wash, rinse, repeat. Gave up after 30mins but decided to have another go just before going to bed and got a much better alignment.

Anyway, tonight has been a very clear night, so with the thermals on had a go with the new collimation and Saturn was very clear and crisp, though the rings are nearly edge-on so it looks like a weird barred disc and not the image you expect (will have to wait a few years before the rings open right out again). With the finder-scope now properly aligned and the azimuth encoder fixed objects in the sky are a lot easier to find than the first attempt in December, though at times it's still easier to point the scope by line-of-sight using the barrel of the finder-scope, then use the finder-scope to fine-tune and then switch to the 'scope eyepiece — this was the way I found Comet Lulin, which is not as bright as I expected — certainly not visible to the naked-eye, but the coma and a star-like central point for the comet body are visible in the 'scope.

I need to find a location where I can take the telescope as it's awkward creeping around the garden at night trying not to attract the attention of the neighbours and the streetlights are rather bright, but for this I need a bigger car! With the scope set in the dark corner of the garden I'm limited to viewing overhead down to 20 degrees above the horizon from the north-east to the south, but that's still a fair amount of sky. Now with the controller tracking the sky properly slewing to objects is pretty easy (I thought I'd enjoy star-hopping a telescope, but not at all — having arrow directions on where to point the scope is the minimum you need for hassle-free use). So, after Saturn and Comet Lulin, the first galaxy suggested by the controller was NGC2903 — when you look through the finderscope (and it's a 50mm diameter finderscope) you don't see a thing, but sure enough it's there in the 'scope eyepiece. Just a few hundred photons that have travelled to your eye after setting off on their journey many millions of years ago, and which if you hadn't looked at them would have been lost to the patio rather anti-climactically! Globular clusters like Messier 3 looked surprisingly good, nice and bright and with a higher-power eyepiece you can see the swarm of individual stars buzzing around the core of these miniature galaxies.

So, after a couple of hours tonight I'm looking forward to slightly warmer weather for stargazing and doing a bit more and it looks like I've got over most of my initial disappointment.