I have given in to the Dark Side of Astronomy.

This afternoon I purchased my first (undoubtably of many) refractor. This instrument is a C80 of unknown vintage that was previously owned by another TAChyon. Optically, this instrument appears to be at least very good. I was observing at 120x this evening (~40x/in.) at the view was still sharp, and limited by the mediocre seeing.

The driven Polaris mount is a joy. Even with minimal alignment (I leveled the tripod and pointed it mostly North) objects would stay in view at high (for this scope) mag for plenty long enough. A quick tweak of the manual dec control or the 8x slew is enough to bring anything back to center. Setup really took no longer than it does for my Dob.

Of course, an 80mm refractor, even one as good as this, is not enough to make it rain, so I did get a brief look at Jupiter and Luna before the clouds got too thick. At 120x the view was sharp. The scope would like to work at higher magnification, which will have to await acquisition of a reaonable Barlow. I was able to make out some interesting low contrast features on the edge of Oceanus Procellarum (why do I want to call it "Oceanus Procul Harum"? ;): Unnamed on Rukl, it looked like a double crater that was filled in by lava. I think that it was in the vicinity of Flamsteed, but my copy of Rukl was hiding and I only just dug it out.

I expect that I am going to really enjoy this telescope.

-- archer