1st light LX200R

[Rocket Pooch]

Hi,

I actually got a couple of hours to play with the 8" LX200R last night and give it a try, I know I've had it for about three months now  but with work commitments and the fact I did not have enough dew removal power to use it I've had to wait till last night after I re-build a dew strip to keep it nice and dry.

The weather conditions and seeing yesterday were awful and also it completely clouded over by 7pm !

Anyway, I did do a couple of things with the scope before I used it, firstly I added an Antares crayford focuser onto the OTA, secondly I tightened up the secondary support so the tube held collimation.

So with the dew heater in 90% I had a quick visual session.

Firstly the main things I noticed was unlike my 8" LX90 the stars in my 60% FOV 26mm APO eyepiece we're completely round all the way from left to right up and down, this was not the same on the LX90 which used to suffer a bit of star elongation at the edges.  With a 3x Barlow and 15mm LER eyepiece Mars was showing a lot of albedo feature and the polar regions we're very white, the colours we're excellent, considering the seeing was awful I was impressed to see anything at all.

Now the Antares Crayford, this is ok, but if anyone has a WO scope and one of these, I have both, you will see a massive difference in build quality between the two.  The Antares works, but you cannot rotate it and when you lock it there is some imgae shift, this is not what I want when imaging so I'll need to work on a fix for this.  However, the crayford is still a big step up from the turny know focusing of most SCT's.

I did not imaging on the scope, I know someone who has used the scope for imaging and the images we're very goodt, so I'm sure it will be ok, the flat field on the 8" RCT is 44mm which is big enough for an ST1100, if only I could afford one.  Well if the weather ever clears and I'm not working I'll do so me imaging with it.

Chris

[JohnP]

Great sounds very promising.. can't wait to see some images - hopefully you'll get a chance for Mars before it gets too far away.....

John

[RobertM]

Hi Chris,

I think you probably got it at the right time.  With the lost R/C lawsuite and manufacturing moving to the far east I can't see Meade scopes getting any better.

Looking forward to those images...

Robert