Sucky weather

Well here it is July 26 and I have yet to image through the new Celestron Advanced VX 8 Schmidt Cass with the DSI. Thank moonlit nights with sucky New England weather. Even relatively clear nights have been plagued with poor transparency. For the next couple of weeks I'm in Maryland. Mid Atlantic weather with its mediocre transparency and frequent cloudiness also tends to suck.  Some amateur astronomers will observe that my buying a new scope is at fault for the sucky weather. I agree with them. Okay, enough whining.

New Scope

New Telescope: In my last posting I wrote of my frustration with hot pixels and combined with drift. I had been thinking about upgrading my 24 year old Meade LXD650 drive. Then I noticed the Celestron Advanced VX combined with an 8 inch Schmidt Cassegrain would be a super upgrade for $1600. Combined that with free shipping and no sales tax, sorry Massachusetts, and I pounced.

I've had the scope for two weeks now. New England weather mostly sucks combined with a need to familiarize myself with the drive functionality and I have not had a chance to use the DSI. Also, after receiving the scope I ordered a 2 inch mirror diagonal and 0.63 focal reducer field flattener. 

I love this scope and drive combination. The tripod drive combination is so much lighter and less cumbersome to carry around than the Meade 127ED/LXD650 it replaces. Portability promotes more use. The drive is smoother when slewing and quieter. The drive certainly tracks better. Once nice feature is the ability of the scope to remember its last alignment, a feature I find useful when deploying the scope on my third floor patio. The straight through 30 mm finder is a neck pain but by using my 40mm ortho eyepiece the scope can be its own finder.

As of this writing the moon is full  delaying any chance of trying the DSI with the new scope.  I'll be heading to Maryland for a couple of weeks as the moon wanes and will try the scope/imaging combination then.