Equipment
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I resisted the temptation to go out and buy loads of gear until I was sufficiently experienced to know exactly what I needed. My kit is growing steadily but each purchase is considered carefully as I don't want a cupboard full of unused astro junk. I've bought things as and when I've needed them.
Below is a rundown of some of the stuff I've accumulated so far and my thoughts on it.
My 'Scopes
I bought my 1st scope
in 2006 from
Orion Optics, a local company from
Crewe Cheshire with a reputation for optically superior
scopes. As you can see from the pic I was reasonably pleased to get my hands on
it!!
I considered scopes by the other prominent makers but having read everything I could find on the web and pestered everyone who would listen I decided to go for Orion's Europa 200 Newtonian Reflector. With its 8" mirror it's big enough for serious stargazing, but small enough to retain reasonable portability. I live on a well lit housing estate so portability is important for those times when I want to find a dark corner out of the village , although for day to day (or should that be night to night) observing the darker parts of my garden including my observatory are perfectly ok. My scope's weight is 21kgs total so it's easily manageable. The Europa tubes are supplied on a Vixen GP-E equatorial mount and stand on a sturdy Vixen hardwood tripod. I wasn't too keen on the idea of a wooden tripod at first but I've since read plenty of gripes from owners of low end aluminium tripods regarding their lack of rigidity and I must say my wooden jobbie has proven quite suitable for the purpose so far. I chose the F6 focal ratio tube on the advice of Barry at Orion as, being a beginner I hadn't a clue what my eventual main interest would be. I wanted to be able to observe both in the solar system and in deep sky. F6 offers a good compromise for both jobs. I decided to enhance the scope by purchasing a single axis motor drive for tracking and I also went for the enhanced Hilux coating on the mirrors to increase the scope's light gathering potential, and the 1/6th PV wave front optics upgrade to further improve things. I haven't had as many clear nights as I'd have liked to get to grips with the scope but I'm very pleased with the optical quality. Orion guarantee the quality of their optics, testing every scope's primary mirror and providing a certificate confirming the test results. Update - I've since added a declination motor to the GP-E and swapped the control unit for a dual axis one. This is a huge improvement allowing minor adjustments in any direction without having to locate those pesky slow motion control knobs in the dark. I was also tempted to make a power pack to replace the standard power supply which runs from 4 x 1.5v batteries, but to my amazement the 1st set of batteries lasted for around 10 observing sessions so there's no point adding both weight and complexity to my kit by using a power pack Update # 2 - Since adding my goto system I have also added a homemade powerpack to supply the extra power needed in the field but I've kept it as small and light as possible by making one rather than buying a commercial one
Having got a taste for Orion Optics scopes I decided to add a larger tube to the armoury for visual work. I acquired this superb DX300 F4 in April 2008 from Skylight Telescopes in London. They deal in quality used gear at fair prices as well as new stuff and if you're looking for a particular scope you could do a lot worse than looking at their stock before buying new. Richard the proprietor went out of his way to help me out and did me a good deal too. The scope was in almost mint condition apart from some dew marks on the optics which do not appear to be detrimental to the views offered by this great scope. It came with a Vixen GPDX mount which will replace the GP-E in my observatory. The GP-E will then become my field mount
After a few sessions with this scope I can confirm that it's a brilliant bit of kit. It offers superb views of all objects even though at F4 it's a little short for high magnification work. I'm pleasantly surprised at how good it is for planetary work at such a short focal length too. I've added Meade Autostar to the mount to give affordable GOTO and all in all I'm very pleased with it
I acquired this Bresser Lyra 70mm refractor from a friend who bought it new to use as a guidescope. I'd been looking for a "quick look" scope since mounting my reflector permanently in my observatory so was very happy to relieve him of it for a small fee when it became surplus to requirements. These scopes sell new for as little as £69.95 so I wasn't expecting to be blown away by the view at the eyepiece, but after a couple of quick looks through it I'm actually very pleased with its performance considering that it is ultimately a low end beginner's package. The Astro-3 mount is ok for a scope of this size and the aluminium tripod is ok too. I've had reasonable views of the Moon at 180x and it's great for terrestrial stuff as well. The package includes 3 eyepieces (of the reverse Kellner type) a mirror diagonal, an erecting eyepiece, a 2x Barlow which although plastic is actually ok, a moon map, a red torch, flexi slow motion controls and some Meade software. All in all, worth the money and a good used buy.
Eyepieces
To complement the supplied 10mm & 25mm Plossl eyepieces I bought a 4mm Celestron Omni Plossl and a 42mm Moonfish Superview 65 degree 2" plossl. The Omni is quite disappointing and has a cheap feel to it (it's poorly finished and offers quite a dim view) but the Moonfish Superview is a superb article for the money, offering crisp bright "spacewalk" views which I didn't dare hope for from a 50 quid 2" EP and on the strength of this I also bought a Moonfish 2x ED Barlow Lens and a 15mm Ultrawide 80 degree eyepiece, both of which are well up to the task. I now have an excellent spread of magnifications, from 28x upwards. The theoretical limit for my scope is around 400x, but on an average night I don't bother using anything over 160x. For lunar observing I've had reasonable results at 450x and up to 600x (again for lunar use) is useable on a clear night although obviously this is pushing things, and so clarity is not great.
I learned a valuable lesson regarding eyepieces when I tried the very cheap reverse Kellners supplied with my Bresser Lyra in both my 8" Newtonian (see above) and in a friend's 10" LX200R. To my amazement in my newt they were almost (but not quite) comparable to the basic plossls supplied with that scope and In the LX200R whilst the difference between the RKs and the superb Vixen Lanthanums the owner uses were undeniable and immediately obvious, they were not so huge as to make the RKs disappointing (quite the opposite in fact) the main drawbacks of the RKs being a very narrow FOV and a slight lack of brightness. I'm not knocking quality EPs here, and looking through a quality eyepiece like a Lanthanum is a truly breathtaking experience and budget allowing I would go for quality EPs every time (even though I don't actually own any expensive ones...) but if funds are tight, this demonstrates that basic stuff can be perfectly ok (in my humble opinion) with a bit of research. If your eyepieces came with your scope and you want to upgrade I would avoid spending a fortune on better ones without trying some out 1st. You might be surprised how well yours stack up!
Filters
Filters for this & filters for that will soon have you carting a box full of the damned things to your dark sky site but choosing a few carefully has paid dividends for me so far. I chose an inexpensive Antares 32A red filter for Mars and so far I'm pleased to say it offers improved views, and should be useful for some other planets as well. I bought a moon filter to reduce Lunar glare and this adds lots of contrast. My pride and joy is my Orion Ultrablock filter, which is a narrowband filter allowing only hydrogen beta & oxygen III light to pass through making it useful for blocking light pollution from streetlamps and even better for greatly enhancing contrast in various nebulae even when light pollution is not a problem. M42 is nice unfiltered but is absolutely stunning through my ultrablock. Worth every penny if you like the deep sky.
Red Dot Reflex Finder
Sick of lying on the ground to aim my scope (and praying my 6 dogs had not been in the vicinity...) I decided to try an Astro Engineering Red Dot Reflex Finder. I have to say it's a fab bit of kit, negating the need to sight objects along the OTA, and making aiming the scope a piece of cake. I retained my finder scope as well for star hopping, and the combination is great
9x50 Right Angled finderscope
The original 6x30 finder on my Europa 200 although adequate was not great. It was optically good and worked fine but in certain positions was a real pain in the neck (literally....) to use. Having said that I would not have bothered spending money on a replacement but I stupidly broke the crosshairs (don't ask...) rendering it less than useful, so I bought a Skywatcher right angled 9x50 to replace it. It was the cheapest I could find but I've seen the same scope offered by other suppliers (for a lot more money as well!!) so I presume it's a generic one, maybe a Synta or a GSO. It's brighter and clearer than the 6x30 and comfortable in all situations but is considerably less intuitive to use than a straight through one. Think about this before changing to a right angled finder. They are far more comfortable & convenient to look through but not knowing which way is up (and I'm not joking...) makes starhopping much less straightforward. (Well it would wouldn't it??) All in all I'm not sure if I'd call binning the straight through finder an upgrade or not.
Electric Focuser
My 1st night out with my Toucam was enough to persuade me that I needed an electric focuser. Focusing the image on a PC screen is hard but having the image jumping all over the place as well makes it a real pain. I initially made a great batteryless electric focuser for a few quid which improved matters no end and instantly removed most of the difficulty from focusing my webcam. This convinced me that a cheap electronic focuser by Orion (US) should be my next purchase. I bought this from Telescope House and it turned out to be an excellent addition to my kit. It's been in constant use now for several months and still has the original battery in place. There is a slight downside and that is the fact that the scope cannot now be focused by hand without loosening a grub screw, however, I like the electronic focuser so much that I don't want to hand focus anyway.
Collimating
I must admit to being quite concerned about whether or not I would be able to successfully collimate a Newtonian reflector without any previous experience or tools for the job and being told how critical it is to have correct collimation didn't do a lot for my confidence. As expected, it wasn't long before I clonked the door frame with my pride & joy on the way out for a session. Once outside a quick star test confirmed my worst fears. I couldn't put off the inevitable any longer. (Star testing takes lots of practice and I'm not very good at it but obvious errors in collimation will show as star tails on a focused star and/or eccentric donuts on a defocused star. That's all I look for) Having tried some of the basic methods on the web which don't require a collimator (without any success), I paid Orion a visit for some help & advice and I bought a Cheshire Collimating eyepiece which, after a bit more head scratching proved easy and quick to use and the whole collimation thing has finally sunk in. Now I'm a bit more practised I tend to slam the Cheshire in for a quick check before every observing session if I have time. Update- Having dismissed laser collimators as an unnecessary complication, I've now bought one. Why? Because when I tried to Collimate my DX300 F4 I couldn't see the entire primary mirror in my Cheshire eyepiece (presumably due to the steeply tapering light path) so couldn't get the secondary mirror pointing at the primary mirror with any degree of accuracy. The laser collimator sorts this out and is quicker too, but I still use the Cheshire for accurate primary mirror adjustments. The target area for primary mirror adjustment on a laser collimator just seems too small to be reliable. Comments?
Books
As a total novice with (at that time) no friends into astronomy who could guide me I thought I'd buy a couple of books to help me learn the night sky. My 1st purchase was the Cambridge Star Atlas. I was very pleased with it at 1st and it is a good general guide, but even during my 1st few observing sessions I found the star charts themselves lacking as a serious aid to finding stuff. They only go down to Magnitude 6.5 so even the finder scope view is much more detailed than the chart, making things confusing & difficult for a beginner. It is however a clearly drawn atlas with a lot of other good stuff in it and is a welcome addition to my kit, if a little short on detail. To avoid carrying it around I copied the charts and heavy-duty laminated them to keep the damp out. The laminate makes them great for drawing on as well. Joining the dots of the constellations makes finding your way around the chart a doddle, and I don't mind admitting that I do it!! My 2nd, and better purchase was "Turn Left At Orion". In my 1st couple of hours observing with this book I moved from not having a clue how to find any deep sky objects to finding clusters & nebulae etc with reasonable ease. All the brilliant reviews this book gets are fully justified. If you're a novice, Buy it!! You won't regret it.
Binoculars
Whilst awaiting the arrival of my scope I began learning the sky using a pair of 7-15x30 compact binos. I've used these in daylight for several years and found them to be ok, if lacking some detail at 15x but under a night sky the small aperture made observing a dark affair, so I bought a cheap pair of Vivitar 10x50s. I use them as often as possible and having looked through other cheap binos since then mine seem better than most for the price and the couple of optical faults they've got seem common in most low end models. I've since looked on Ebay and good used 10x50s of known makes go for next to nothing so you could start your search there if you want a cheap pair. There are also loads of cheap new ones on ebay but I would probably stick to the known makes. The ruby coatings found on some of the cheaper binos are not what you want for low light conditions. The general consensus is that the green, blue or violet coatings are superior
Photography
My observatory is now up & running and I'm doing some photography using a Philips Toucam Pro PCVC 740K and a scrounged PC. So I'm taking astro pics after laying out only a few quid for a webcam and plugging it into an old donated PC (thanks Tim!!) So astrophotography can be cheap!!! I also have a Meade DSI II colour cam which I may actually get to grips with at some point... See the results of my efforts so far on my Images page. Update - My aging PC was struggling to cope with my DSI II and associated software so I have now installed a shiny new tower in its place, so "cheap" doesn't really enter into it now but at least my cheapo initial setup gave me a taste of astrophotography to ensure I wasn't spending cash on something I wouldn't use and the Toucam still can't be beaten on Lunar & planetary stuff!
Other Stuff
We all need a red torch for reading star charts etc. I bought a red lens for my maglite, which was far too bright. I then received a free key ring type red torch from a supplier, which I'm very grateful for, but that is also too bright. Eventually I painted my mini Maglite with red nail varnish and it worked a treat. I still use the proper ones to look through my kit etc, but for looking at a bright white chart, my dimmer homemade jobbie is far superior....
I live in the middle of a housing estate, so I have horrible horizons in all directions. I spent a pleasant afternoon driving around the countryside with my compass trying to find enough observing sites to make the full 360 degrees. When I got home I downloaded a degree wheel off the web (it's actually a timing wheel for a Vespa....) and plotted the horizons of the viewing sites I'd found on it as a quick reference. It's not fantastically useful but it's free!
