12 Nov 2002. Well, the astronomy gods really had it in for me today. Just last night was a beautiful near-first quarter moon, and by the time I got around to thinking about setting up my one telescope still in operation (the Stellarvue 80), clouds had blown in, obscuring just about everything in sight. Figures. We've had record heat here in South Florida for a couple of days, now, making the prospect of observing much less enticing, with boiling air, mosquitoes, and sweat sweat sweat. I knew there was a reason for this weather.

See, the astro gods knew something that I didn't. Today, Tuesday November 12th, 2002, would mark a new era in Benian astronomy. The UPS man knocked on my door at around 9:30 am, scaring the daylights out of Iggy, my poor grey cat. He had reason to fear -- a whole new Orange cat was knocking on the door!

After signing for the packages, I took an hour off work (easy enough, since I'm the boss of me and I work at home) and spent some time unpacking them. Both of them were used and in less-than-mint condition, having somehow survived the trained goons of UPS's destruction lines. Sherry Hand of Hands On Optics had packed well, with real boxes inside the fake outer boxes. One of the latter, marked Celestron, contained -- in addition to a huge amount of white crumply peanuts (the biodegradable kind, I believe) concealing an old, old footlocker with a busted lock but two serviceable latches and a handle -- absolutely nothing.

But inside that old broken-down footlocker was a gem. (Not a GEM, that was in the other box -- be patient!) A beautiful, completely pristine brand new-looking but dated (according to Hands On) 1972 Orange Tube Celestron C8 OTA. Attached to the OTA were a brand-new (as far as I can tell) visual back, a brand-new 1.25" diagonal, and (bonus!) a brand-new 25mm plossl eyepiece that the ad hadn't mentioned. I assume it's the GTO model, but I don't know... A standard 6x30 finder scope completed the OTA paraphernalia.

CG-5 look-alikesCG-5 Clone

Anyhoo, I looked into the other box, and there, as promised and expected, was a cheap cloned version of a CG-5 mount[*], which is itself a cheap cloned version of the Vixen Super Polaris, a very nice equatorial mount for the price (around $900 with the wooden legs when they were last available new). Aluminum legs, plastic everywhere, but beautiful and new. And, surprising to me anyway, this mount is far superior to my cheap cloned version of Orion's Skyview Deluxe that came with my Stellarvue. I was surprised, based on all the knocks on the CG-5, to find it so smooth right out of the box. Sure, there's a lot of play in the RA axis, but on Dec. it's surprisingly good.

[*] This mount has since been superceded by my CG5 Advanced Series GT mount, which has the GOTO....

It didn't take much more than the hour I'd allotted myself to assemble all the parts, discover that the latitude of South Florida was just beyond the reach of the adjustment screws. The one in back is long, to keep the mount propped up to most of N. America's latitude, while the front one is dinky, too short to contact whatever it's called in there that keeps Polaris in line. I wound up switching them, and it works. Sort of. I'm looking for replacements soon.

One thing that really surprised me was the amount of flex in the tripod to mount connection. The legs have absolutely no resistance to torque; you can watch the whole tripod assembly flex when you move the mount just a little bit. An accessory tray or spreader bar should take care of that (I'm surprised it didn't come with one, but for the price, I'm not too surprised).

So, I get the whole thing together, take it outside onto my deck in the sweltering sun to get the finder scope aligned on the construction cranes a few blocks away (downtown Boca, that bustling metropolis, is expanding upward!). It took a while to get used to adjusting the finder with only one set of screws, providing just 3 points of adjustment, instead of the 6 I'm used to. Another item to upgrade -- I'll probably add a Telrad soon.

Now, all I have to do is work the rest of the day, and wait for night to play with the real first quarter moon! Yay!

A Surprise

Then, a little after noon, another knock on my door! Holy cow! UPS had another box for me, this one from Spectrum coatings! My Cave Astrola 6" mirror that I'd sent out about a month ago for recoating, had chosen this of all days to return to the roost. I almost felt bad for it, getting its thunder stolen by the new arrival. But when I opened the package, I soon lost that sad feeling -- the new coatings are superb! No more stains and cat hair, just shiny smooth mirror at the bottom of that tube. Wow. The secondary, which I had thought was just fine, but since it was free I sent it in anyway -- I hardly recognized it, it was so bright.

This unexpected bit of serendipity (is it still serendipity if it's expected) set up an early-evening showdown -- the 6" Newt versus the 8" cat. Not a real shoot-out, mind you, I don't have eyepieces of similar quality that would provide similar magnification in both scopes, so the brief comparisons I was able to make are even more inherently unfair than most comparisons of scopes with differing apertures, optical designs, and focal lengths.

A Puzzle

 Polar Scope

There was also a very strange-looking device that turned out to be the polar alignment scope. It has a brass knob on it that makes it look like an off-axis guider, and I have no idea what that knob does. There's also an asterism in the sight-tube of the alignment scope, but it doesn't look like anything around Polaris. I wonder if this is the South Polar alignment scope? And what on Earth does that brass knob do? Inside, there's a little green "bulb," but nothing that looks like a battery. When you screw the small brass knob all the way in, it looks like it contacts the back of the "bulb," which leads me to credit the suggestion from Rod B. on sci.astro.amateur that it's a reticle illuminator. Whatever it is, it doesn't illuminate anything at the moment...

First Light

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