This is the first dob I have ever owned. Prior to this the only Newtonian reflector I have owned was my home made GEM mounted 8"f/6
The new dob arrived in 5 boxes. I opened them all to check for any shipping damage. Finding none I proceeded to put the scope together in the living room. James Grigar of Astro Sky sent me photos of how it was supposed to go together which helped a lot. The only problem encountered was placing the mirror in the cell. I was not familiar with a sling cell and had no idea how it worked. I had previously ordered a copy of David Kriege's book " The Dobsonian Telescope thinking that I might like to build my own someday.Well,that had a real good explanation in it, and solved my last problem.
SCOPE CONTRUCTION: The ground board,rocker and box, and the mirror box are well built of 1/2 inch Baltic birch ply with double reinforcing to 1" inch in all the stress points. The scope is equipped with a Moonlite focuser. The truss poles are heavy duty and a mounted at the bottom in ball and socket connectors. The top are held by quick release cam- locks like that found bicycle wheels. The UTA follows standard truss Dob custruction.
OPTICS: Antares secondary, and Woden Optics 12.5" f/5 0.971 primary.
FIRST LIGHT: First light was on May 11 on a very quiet clear night. My first light was delayed nearly a month due one of the wettest April's on record
(the dreaded new scope curse). The wait was worth it. First object was Jupiter and what a fantastic sight. Crisp sharp,all equatorial bands visible,good color. a slightly fade red spot and at higher mag 250X to 340X I could see some cloud detail, as a add bonus I saw the transit of Io it black shadow sharply outlined on Jupiter cloud tops. Saturn was equally wonderful a large yellowish globe at high power with tan eq. bands. The rings were sharp and crisp. I originally had some trepidation about how the planets would look because I was not sure my collimating was spot on, but it seemed good enough. I then swung over to M44 with using a 35mm Orion Deep Sky EP (got to get some Panoptics or Naglers). what a view it was like being their. I never noticed the diffraction spikes until I looked for them.
The other night it was so clear that the nearby light polluting was minimal. So I thought I would do test with my vixen 130mm semi apo. i went looking for M51. I could not find it with the 130, maybe a faint smudge but I was not surer. In the 12.5" as expected I found it, spiral structure and all.
CONCLUSION: The Astro Sky is the best scope I have ever owned. Of course it is also the largest currently. Once I got use to using it, it has become my grab and go I leave it fully assembled in my workshop off the garage with wheels attached and just roll it out it let it cool check the collimation(usually does nt need any adjustment if I do not dump it around when rolling it out and go observing. I don't even bother to take the wheels of it I am the only on using it that night. If other folks are around to look I take them off so they don't trip over the handles in the dark.
The views from this big little Dob put to shame the narrow and slightly mushy views of my SCTs. I think my first impression was it was like looking through a larger verion of my vixen 130mm refractor. I now have a case of aperture fever.
Mike F.
