Rambling on and on and on about farming, food and astronomy. Astronomy? Yep. Farming and astronomy go together like garlic and basil, tomatoes and peppers, ice cream and bacon.

10th February 2012

Photo with 3 notes

It’s here! The scope arrived around noon today and I had time to unpack it and put it together before I had to leave for work. It was supposed to arrive Tuesday, but there was a mix up with shipping and I received only the tripod. I was impressed with how Amazon dealt with the situation. I emailed telling them the situation. Within 2 hours I got an email back asking me what I wanted to do, have them ship another scope or give me a refund. I told them I wanted the telescope, and 24 hours it was in my hot little hands! I’m rather excited about it because this is the first serious telescope I’ve had since the 1980s when had to sell my old Celestron refractor. It’s a Celestron CPC 1100 with the XLT coatings and the computerized GOTO mount with GPS. This is so far beyond what I used to have back in the day that I still can’t believe I actually have the thing. Now if it only wasn’t snowing with a windchill of -1 outside! Yeah, it’s big, probably bigger than I should have gotten, but I wanted something capable of deep space astrophotography, and this one can certainly handle that with the addition of a few accessories. I’m either going to have to replace the alt-azmuth mount with a German equatorial or, more likely, get a wedge for it so I can do polar alignment for photography. But even for visual observing, this is about as good as it gets for a portable telescope.

It’s here! The scope arrived around noon today and I had time to unpack it and put it together before I had to leave for work. It was supposed to arrive Tuesday, but there was a mix up with shipping and I received only the tripod. I was impressed with how Amazon dealt with the situation. I emailed telling them the situation. Within 2 hours I got an email back asking me what I wanted to do, have them ship another scope or give me a refund. I told them I wanted the telescope, and 24 hours it was in my hot little hands!

I’m rather excited about it because this is the first serious telescope I’ve had since the 1980s when had to sell my old Celestron refractor. It’s a Celestron CPC 1100 with the XLT coatings and the computerized GOTO mount with GPS. This is so far beyond what I used to have back in the day that I still can’t believe I actually have the thing. Now if it only wasn’t snowing with a windchill of -1 outside!

Yeah, it’s big, probably bigger than I should have gotten, but I wanted something capable of deep space astrophotography, and this one can certainly handle that with the addition of a few accessories. I’m either going to have to replace the alt-azmuth mount with a German equatorial or, more likely, get a wedge for it so I can do polar alignment for photography. But even for visual observing, this is about as good as it gets for a portable telescope.

Tagged: amateur astronomytelescope

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  1. krippner posted this