Oh, and did I mention the new scope?

I've wanted to upgrade from my 8" Dob for a while now: not aperture, but go-to or push-to. Since getting back into the hobby a few years ago, I've been starhopping quite happily...but the last few months have become more frustrating, and I've begun to feel "been there, done that" about finding my way along the skies manually every. Single. TIME. I admit it: I felt like I'd done my time, and I wanted something easier.

I've been keeping my eye on Craigslist, and a few weeks ago I saw an 8" Meade LX10, originally purchased in 1999, for sale for a decent price. It came with the Magellan I setting circles and controllers: push-to on a Cat. I quickly read everything I could find about this setup, and decided I could live with it. And hot dog, I was the first to email the seller! He invited me out to take it for a test spin, and I tell you, I was smitten the moment I saw it. That deep blue colour...oh, wow. I'd always wanted a Cat since I was a kid, and now I had one. (Always had an unexplained preference for Celestron -- nothing about the quality of the scopes, just the colour. And now I have a Meade I'm in love with. Funny old world, isn't it?) I tried the setting circles, and they seemed to work well -- really well, actually. The optics seemed as good as I knew how to look for. The field tripod took a while to stop vibrating when I tapped it, but I figured I could fix that. So I bought it. Still, it's one thing to find M13 and M57 when you already know where they are...how would it work, not just on Craigslist, but in real life?

Of course, the clouds rolled in; I'd've been nervous if they hadn't. I did get a chance to try out the mylar solar filter the seller threw in. I had never seen the daystar through one before, and I have just one word: NEATO! I'd tried out a SunFunnel before, and that was cool...but the crispness of the sunspots through the filter was amazing. And of course, I had my oldest son perform an indoor star test:

As no stars were seen, everything seemed to be in order.

And as clouds do, eventually they rolled out. I went out to a dark(ish) site, did a middling polar alignment, and picked some stars to align on. Lessee, there's Arcturus and Vega -- easy enough, but the controller said "ALIGNMENT ERROR -- CHECK STARS" (which made me think of H.P. Lovecraft and Charles Stross -- anyone here read The Laundry Files?). Oh, right -- I remembered reading that the Magellan did badly if the stars were close to 90 degrees apart. Better to go for a pair around 45 degrees or thereabouts. Well, what about Vega and Albireo? Centre, confirm, centre, confirm, and it was happy. Now to try finding something.

The sequence when something like this:

• M57: "Yep, it's right there. Cool!"
• M13: "Noth--oh wait, there it is. Man, I love fine adjustment knobs."
• M18: "Just a little...there! Holy cow, that's three for three."
• M10: "M10? Arghh, meant to put in M20. Not even sure what that is. Oh well, let's look...oh my god, it's a glob! It was RIGHT THERE! "
• M20: "Down? No, let's try along...there! It's there! How did this thing KNOW?"
• M56: "This is awesome."
• M11: "Dude! Seriously! "

Now, it was at this point that the battery died on the Magellan. Cue knowing nods about the value of starhopping...I went to manual and started hopping through Sagittarius looking at our galaxy's core. (Not that a lot of starhopping was involved; binos showed every Messier object in the area quite clearly -- a wonderful change from suburban skies with practically no southern horizon.) Despite a dew shield, the corrector plate misted up around 11:15pm, and I decided to pack it in early.

So: Man, I'm happy with this. The alignment was not dead-on every time, but everything I looked for was within an FOV or two (40mm Meade Plossl, so just shy of a degree) of where the controller said it should be. The battery died, sure, but it was the one that came with it -- who knows how long it's been in there. Clock drive: did I mention that it came with a clock drive? and how handy that is? I've been trying to improve the Dob's action for a while, but this is just lovely.

It's not ALL perfect. The dew was annoying, and I had assumed the dew shield would ward it off. The setup is much less easily portable than my Dob. (I never thought I would describe a 50-lb Dob as "portable", but a hand truck does wonders.) And just when I'd got used to one set of mental flips when translating atlas to eye, I have to learn another. (I just about broke down trying to figure out what I was looking at on the moon the other morning.) But oh...oh. This scope is wonderful.

(Cross-posted from Cloudy Nights.)