In the Beginning...

In the beginning, I just wanted a decent newtonian telescope - something for under $500. Maybe around $349. Many advised me to get such a telescope, and to "get the biggest mirror you can afford." During my pre-Christmas research I was talking to a couple about printers. After having recommended a printer, I randomly asked "so, do you know anything about telescopes?" The husband said, "I got this big one in my garage.." No idea on much else about it but he kindly offered to send me a photo of the telescope as he was willing to part with it.


Later that day I received a photo of an orange tubed Clestron from the late 1970s. Right off the bat, I recognized that it was indeed a Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. The close-up of the placard on the base confirmed it, a "Clestron 8". With some details about aperture and a diagram to indicate that this was indeed a catadioptric telescope. If you don't know what that means, it basically means that there is a hole in the primary mirror at the rear of the tube. This lines up with where the eyepiece or a camera is mounted. The secondary mirror is still in the front, but no longer does it direct the light diagonally to an eyepiece in the front like on Newtonian or Dobsonian design.




What jumped out at me first was the fact that it's fork mount looked like it was taken from a tank, or some other heavy metal machination. It would be fair to consider the current iteration of NexStar 8SE telescopes to be direct descendants of this unit right here. I did not expect there to be anything "electric" but there was a "clock drive" which basically allows the right-ascension (left and right movement) to follow the stars by countering the rotation of the Earth. I've read it's not perfect, some have built or bought control units which reduce or increase the input voltage in order to affect the speed of the drive. I found the AC port to be in a weird place when using it in table-top configuration so I never bothered to test the clock-drive outside. If I had to wait another two weeks for my mount, I would have drilled a hole in the plank of plywood which I've been using as a surface for the base of the fork. Just to see if such a clock drive would allow me to multi-second time exposures.



As I played around with this telescope and learned some of the ropes, people were advising me that a Newtonian or Dobsonian telescope was the way to go. If my only option was a current day SCT, it would have ran me just under one grand. The used C8 that the kind gentleman was "really trying to get rid of" was offered for $250. I felt extremely fortunate, this gave me a head start. I knew that even if I spent a thousand bucks on the OTA that the mount would have still likely costed me more. Was it a fair price for both parties concerned? I think so, it certainly got me to "jump" at buying and stop vacillating over the decision.



Was the telescope ready to be used immediately after? Well, yes and no. Yes it was immediately equipped to get rather stupendous lunar views. Maybe could be better by some other people's standards but it had a lot more zoom than any of my SLR lenses and greater clarity than my camcorders which are capable of rather high levels of magnification. Many years ago I even managed to spot Jovian moons with a Sony HandyCam TR-818. At some point soon I may try a few of my camcorders out, perhaps afocal through the eyepiece. Perhaps this will allow me to do that thing where you extract the good frames or let software filter out the noise. Haven't even looked into that too much yet.


As I've been doing already, I shall perform imaging through an Olympus EPL-1 mirrorless body with the sensor at prime focus. Tonight's plan, weather permitting. First we'll try for tracking the moon. After I've achieved approximate polar alignment. Maybe I'll be lazy and just start in Alt-Az mode. Depends if I can see the constellations around Polaris. Then again, maybe I can use another means to align. Well anyway, first I'll get the mount properly oriented -- whatever that entails. Next I will set my "circles" or whatever you call the various rings with the numbers on them. Setting circles? Well, those. I really think I should buy a real compass. I don't trust my phone although it does a more admirable job than all of my prior devices which claim to have a "compass", compass my... never mind.


Presumably one simply needs to identify where north is and align the mount and the RA ring accordingly. Then once the mount is level to the ground, to do the same for the declination ring. After that, I would power up and use the SynScan keypad to tell the mount where I am, and what time it is. Oh snap, before I even do that I have to probably adjust something based on my latitude. I think that's the only detail that I am aware of not being clear on at this time.


Aside from alighning it right and tracking the moon, tonight's third goal is to point the mounted telescope at the Orion Nebula. To take pictures as I already have without any tracking, except this time with tracking. It is my hope that I can take time exposures that are longer than one second without encountering trails. My goal is to get up to 15-20 seconds. At a 2.5th  second I can resolve the gaseous nature of the nebula, with more time I presume that I'll see more. Of course the ligh pollution will become more troublesome but I'm in a south facing (SSW) backyard, Manhattan is north-east of my position. I fear that finding Polaris can be challenging but at least it's a number of degrees left and away from the graduated dome of light which emanates from the heart of of this metropolis.