First Light with the C8

Both scopes were, apparently, at least roughly collimated -- halfway through the late afternoon/early twilight session I was able to find Vega and rack in and out of focus. The seeing was bad, it was hot and windy, but the images looked fairly uniform, the shadows of the secondaries were as close as I could determine to the center of the image, and so I was quite satisfied that all things were as equal as they were going to get.

The moon

I began with the only real target of the night (thunderclouds swooped in soon after I got through my entire eyepiece case, and I should probably stop writing this review, with the lightning going off and threatening my computer...), the aforementioned first quarter moon. Images were significantly brighter through the SCT, but, due either to seeing or the smaller secondary obstruction, the detail was not substantially more resolved in either scope. Contrast got better in both scopes as the sky darkened; the initial edge was to the SCT but the Newt caught up in the gathering dark.

The Alpine Valley was well situated, so I looked around on the floor of Mare Imbrium and at the Montes Alpes to try to see which scope could pick up the finer details. The rille system that terminates at Piazzi Smyth was fascinating; I hadn't seen it in a while, if in fact ever, and I could see several of the craters on the floor that I'd never noticed before. Archimedes was impressive, with almost half of the floor in shadow, the other half illuminated -- a mini terminator inside a crater on the moon! The terraced walls provided an intricate pattern of dark and light. I wish either or both scopes had drives, so I could have more easily switched back and forth. I also wish I'd taken some notes, since I'm forgetting most of what I saw! Rukl helps for the reconstruction, but I should have had him at the eyepiece...

Saturn

Technical Data

I tried each scope at two different magnifications: 100x and 200x. In the Cave, I first tried a 12mm Kellner, but quickly gave up due to the horrible ghosting and lack of contrast. I settled for my only other option: the Televue 24mm Wide Angle, barlowed. On the C8, I used my Meade 20mm research grade Erfle.

For the higher magnification (200x) on the Cave, I used an anonymous old Japanese 6mm ortho that seems to suffer from yellowing and severe sweat stains (eyeballs are sweaty here deeper than the Deep South!).

In the C8, I just used the Meade barlowed.

I also had fun with the TV 15 plossl and a Siebert 7mm WA. Unfortunately, I'm so bad at math that it never occurred to me to try both scopes at 80x, which would have been easy -- the TV 15 in the Cave and the new 25mm plossl in the C8! So that's my next task, after the thunder and lightning go away...

Night 2: DSOs

I suppose you could log this one under aperture wins and be done with it, but I was a bit surprised, so I'm reporting my experiences on my second night with an orange tube C8:

After all the heat So. Fla. experienced in the days leading up to the Cat's arrival, Day 2 of the new Benian era in astronomy commenced much cooler, overcast, and even rainy! The gods had decreed -- this scope would not escape the curse of the new equipment. It was windy all day, but by nightfall, the clouds had blown clean out to sea! The wind remained, but all that did was foul up the seeing. The cold front introduced the worst seeing I'd ever experienced in Florida before -- the highest useful power on the moon was 100x, with 80x being more reasonable. And, since the moon was so bright, I didn't think I'd have much luck with the typical autumn DSOs (for me, that pretty much means a few globulars and the Andromeda galaxy). But I wasn't about to let that stop me -- after all, I'm not much of a quitter (I didn't get very far as a quitter, so I quit).

So I set up, play with and discard the roiling boiling moon (which really isn't all that bad of a target; the seeing is probably around a 6 on the Pickering scale [which applies to stellar objects, not planets, but still...]), and decide to "slew" the scope over to the classic Autumn constellation, Andromeda. By "slew" I mean of course, grab the tube and haul it around on its axes until the OTA is roughly aligned, and use the slow-motion knobs from there. I was in luck -- the Andromeda Galaxy was a definite smudge even in the 6x30 finder scope. So I use my 80x eyepiece (the 25mm plossl) and take my first glimpse at what an 8" SCT can do on deep sky -- and am severely disappointed. Nothing but the very brightest core of the galaxy is visible. It loooks more impressive in the finderscope. What the *&$%! is going on?!?

Oh.

That's not M31. It's M32. M31 is over there. Wow. Granted, being without the Cave since M31 became favorably positioned, I had sort of forgotten what an aperture of more than 80mm can do. But this is unreal. I hadn't even had a hint of the companion galaxies all season through the Stellarvue. And now here, on an 8-day old moon, is perhaps the largest extended faint fuzzy I've ever gotten in the city. I can't say that I can see much detail, but even without averted vision I can see quite a bit of deep deep space brightness. I set up the Cave to compare, and it too was able to resolve the companion galaxy, which it hadn't been able to do before getting its new coating. Thanks, Brian, for suggesting it! But I'm in love with the Cat's compactness, lightness, and light grasp. I've got some strategizing to do...

After perusing M31 and M32, I go looking for something that Stellarvue owners like myself pride their wide field refractors on: The Double Cluster in Perseus. And I'll admit, even in my widest FOV, I can't get both clusters in there. Each cluster is quite rich on its own merits, however, and the Cat seems to show many more stars than the Stellarvue, but without the impact that the smaller wider scope can muster. Nevertheless, this new scope is nowhere near as handicapped as those RFT enthusiasts sometimes imply...

To be fair, a "contest" between two scopes with such radically different qualities, held under urban skies, is not even worth reporting. I'm looking forward to taking them both to dark skies and seeing what happens.

Bottom Line: Aperture wins. M31 was a big faint fuzzy in the 80mm, looked good in the 6", and looked worthy of extended study with direct vision in the 8".

One last gripe: the CG-5 clone that this OTA is mounted on completely crapped out as I was trying to get a later look at two objects: the fabulous and famous M42 near culmination, and the King of the planets, Jupiter, rising in the east. The RA axis worm gear completely failed to mesh with the slo-mo knob's gear. I brought it inside and used Astronomy Boy's adjustment techniques (have to wait til the weekend to do the complete overhaul), and I think I have that problem licked -- but why did it have to wait until the seeing had started to settle down, and my primary object of interest was coming up?

Jupiter has always been better than Saturn in my book; maybe it's one more sign that I should slow down and observe each object more carefully -- I saw the first signs of detail on Saturn's disk that I'd ever seen in one of my own scopes last night... And the glimpse I had of M42, even after the failure of the RA gear, was the best I've ever had. From anywhere. Through any scope. I don't know what to attribute that to, except perhaps Florida's steady skies? It was practically 3-dimensional, with the most color I'd ever seen.