First Light Report: Orion ED80

by Marek Cichanski


I have a big ol' grin on my face!

I just got in from a couple of hours of quick & dirty observing with my new Orion ED80 refractor. I love it. It arrived today, I did a couple of hours of observing under a milky, cirrus-y, full-moon sky, and I had a ball. I'd say that this review is off to a positive start.

I ordered the ED80 OTA and some simple Orion rings to go with it. I used the Celestron CG-3 mount that once held my C-5 OTA. (That OTA was sold to help finance the ED80.) The rings worked fine, after I removed the 1/4"-20 mounting block that comes on the ED80. (As Ed Ting pointed out in his S&T review, this block doesn't do you any good, so I just took it off. I had to remove the entire focuser housing, but that was easy to do, and easy to reinstall. No worries.) Once the silly little mounting block was gone, I put the OTA on the mount.

I don't have a refractor diagonal, which seemed like a big problem, until I saw that I could just crudely stuff the end of my Orion 2" SCT diagonal into the 2" focuser hole of the ED80, and it worked! Held in place by 2 set screws, the SCT diagonal actually stayed put and gave great images. If I can get this jury-rig to be a little less 'jury' and a little more 'rig', I may forgo a refractor diagonal altogether. Crazy!

I used a 16mm type 5 Nagler and a 5mm type 6 Nagler.

First light was on the moon, natch. Instant first impression: No color. I might as well have been looking through a reflector. I don't even know what the color purple looks like. The moon was, of course, blazingly full, although there was a tiny bit of shadow around the southern half of the limb. It was actually a really nice view of the moon, believe it or not. Mare Orientale wasn't exactly in view, but that part of the limb was librated towards us, and I had the best view of Lacus Veris and Lacus Autumni I've ever had. Seeing must have been 4 out of 5. The Cordillera and Rook mountains stood out beautifully against the limb.

Then it was time for Jupiter. Took it up to 120x with the 5mm Nagler, and it looked great. I was genuinely impressed by the contrast. I really had a hard time believing that I was looking through a 3" scope, the detail and contrast were so good. Again, I felt that I was seeing zero color. Violet? What's that? Don't know what you're talking about.

Saturn was great, too. Very sharp Cassinin division, as well as belts and polar zones. Titan and another moon were visible.

M42 didn't show much nebulosity due to moon and cloud, but 4 stars in the Trapezium were trivially easy even at a mere 40x.

Beautiful split of Castor. Nice concentric diffraction rings at 120x, both in focus and out of focus.

That's basically all I saw before packing it in. I can't wait to take this scope out again. Very lightweight, very portable, and yet it performed very well. I can tell that I am going to really enjoy using this scope. If it's clear this weekend, I'll gladly go to some place like MB in order to play with the scope some more, despite the full moon.

I can't believe that I can now use the phrase "my apochromatic refractor"! Nutty! There's only one tragic problem...far from whetting my appetite for refractors, by being a cheap-yet-good one...it just makes me want an even bigger apo! Arrrrghhh! Noooo! I'm doomed!


Posted on sf-bay-tac Fri Feb 6 01:32:40 2004 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.0 Fri Feb 6 21:01:14 2004 PT