First light

This past Sunday I picked up a reflector on Craigslist. It's an Omcon 811SE, a 114mm f/9 Newtonian. I hadn't heard of the name before, but a quick search showed that they'd been built in the '90s here in Vancouver, and at least one CloudyNights.com member has one listed in their sig.

It seemed like it was in good condition. It came with a pretty sturdy wooden tripod with an alt-az friction mount, a 6x30 finder scope, and two eyepieces: an 18mm Kellner (50X), and a 7.5mm Plossl (120X). At $40 (knocked down from $50!), it was too good a deal to pass up.

...And then the clouds came. OF COURSE. I spent my time adjusting the finder and pointing it out the window, cursing water vapour under my breath.

Finally, we got some clear-ish skies; there were lingering clouds, but they seemed thin. I took it out to a park within walking distance of my house. The skies are by no means dark, but it's easy to get there. I set up the scope, popped in the 18mm, pointed it at a star, focussed and...hey, a star! Definitely reassuring, since I wasn't sure about how good the collimation was...it seemed okay to me, based on what I'd read, but the mirror has no centre mark and it was hard to be sure without actually testing it.

Finally, Orion came out, so I pointed it at M42...

...WOW.

WOW.

I'd only ever looked at it before in binoculars and my Galileoscope (the only other scope I've had since people started calling me a grownup), and...well, frankly it didn't seem like all that. I mean, it was nice, but nothing spectacular. But this...THIS was spectacular.

I swapped in the 7.5, and incredibly it seemed even better. It was fainter, of course, but the narrower FOV seemed to focus my attention more. I spent some time letting it drift across the eyepiece, and began to notice dark spots, lanes and such. It was amazing. I couldn't say I saw any colour, but I definitely know now what the fuss is about.

I decided to try the Pleides, and even at 50X -- such a narrow FOV compared to binoculars! -- it was astonishing. I just kept repeating "Oh wow" over and over again.

Finally, I decided to try splitting Eta Cassiopeia. I missed it at 50X, found it at 120X and then saw it on second look at 50X. Can't say I saw any colour difference between the two.

(I'd been REALLY hoping to see Jupiter, but the thrice-cursed clouds hid it.)

Now, the scope isn't perfect. The mounting definitely needs to be tweaked to make it easier to move (while not actually falling down), and pointing it at the zenith is going to be difficult. The &?*#! finderscope kept dewing over (first priority is to get my kids to make me a dew shield; they're 4 and 2, so it'll be a great craft project for them :-)). And even w/o much experience I can the eyepieces aren't great...in the 18mm, stars get fuzzy or elongated at the edge of the FOV, and the focus on the 7.5mm seems mushy/hard to achieve. (Though I suppose that could be the mirror...I wouldn't know.)

But oh man, oh man, oh man...what a night. I couldn't be happier with my new scope.