by Tom McIntyre
Well....I bought it, coliminated it, aligned the red dot finder and took it and the kids outside last weekend on the porch just before their bedtime. Too many clouds of course, but I asked my older son where he'd like to point to. We tried the moon (a little hazy through the clouds, though they were excited to see the bumps), and few bright stars in a few clear patches.
Just for fun I asked them about that one right overhead, got it in focus on the low power lens (only about 25x) and thought...this thing needs more colimination, b/c it looks oblong.
..but not blurry...
What ya know, Saturn. Seeing it as a surprise and for the first time face to face, hit home that the universe is a weirder place then one's intuition might expect. For example, who would expect to look up at a star and find a ball with a ring instead?
So far it's only been a couple days, but there's only been a few issues:
1) The vanes appear very slightly misaligned (non perpendicular). The instructions to tighten/loosen the three threaded screws around the front rim don't seem to have much effect. I did get the center dot well aligned though, and so have ignored it for now.
2) The eyepieces are cheaper then standard Plossls. On the other hand the mirror is advertised as parabolic, so this seemed a better bet then the XT 4.5.
3) The starblast is so small that it pretty much has to go on a bench or a milk crate or something, which isn't quite as stable as the ground -- particularly with two little kids hopping around, crowding in, and grabbing the scope.
But on the other hand, they can and they do, which was pretty much the whole point.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Mon Feb 23 16:19:21 2004 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.0 Fri Mar 12 21:09:02 2004 PT