New XT10 In Town!

(Part 1 of 2)

by Joe Fragola

Part 1 - The Wait is Over!

I placed my order for an Orion SkyQuest XT10 Dobsonian back on April 5th. While waiting for arrival of the XT10 I was fortunate enough to be able to borrow an XT8 from the “scope loaner pool” of the San Jose Astronomical Association. My plan was to get familiar with the operation of the XT8 and then “graduate” to the XT10. Last Tuesday afternoon, July 17, I received a call from Orion telling me that my XT10 was in. I’m fortunate to live about 50 miles north of the Orion wherehouse in Watsonville, CA and saved the $68 shipping fee by driving down to pick up my scope on Wednesday morning. After arriving home, I opened the two boxes the scope was packed in. One box contained the unassembled base and the other contained the OTA and accessories (2 eyepieces - 25mm and 9mm, moon filter, finder scope & bracket, eyepiece holder, and the hardware for the tension spring mount).

Assembly of the base was very easy, aided by the presence of pre-drilled holes. The assembly process was interrupted because I had to go into work that afternoon. When I arrived home that evening I finished the last two parts of assembly - mounting the finder scope to the OTA and the installation of the springs for the tension mount. Here’s where I ran into a stumbling block. After completing the assembly I was anxious to take the scope out to align the finder scope from my driveway. It was already about 1030 p.m. and I was getting tired, but the excitement of finally looking through my own XT10 won out. Earlier, when I mounted the finder to the OTA, I noticed that it was obviously skewed from being parallel with the main tube. It turned out that the finder was so far off that I didn’t have enough travel in the adjustment screws to get even close to alignment.

I packed up around 11:30 p.m. and called it a night. The next day, after a good night’s sleep, I tackled the finder scope alignment again. In the light of day I noticed that the pre-installed bracket on the OTA looked crooked on the OTA. I loosened the two screws holding this bracket and was able to straighten it out. This time when I mounted the finder on the OTA it looked parallel to the main tube. I wanted to wait until evening and align the finder using a star. From the cul-de-sac I live on there was no clear view of a distant landmark to allow me to align during the day. Unfortunately, as darkness fell, I experienced the curse of every new scope owner - some low clouds and fog rolled into the Silicon Valley. There would be no observing this night. First light would have to wait.