Breaking the new gear jinx

Got a picture to share with us Kieran?

WOW! Not a full test cause I did not wait till full darkness before I broke it down and took it back into the house.

Jupiter very good at 21.50 with nice colours to the bands. At 23.00 it was nearly too bright to see the bands.

M13 even with a blue tint to the sky was a nest of needle point stars which got better later on as it darkened.

I then went hopping around the sky. M31 was quite good but again it was still not really dark but a lot better than I'd seen it before.

I quit early as I did not want to have to come clomping and banging into the house in the wee hours and get a rollicking since its a work day.

Its a heavy beast. Even the wooden base is hard to manhandle. I'd hate to have to carry it to dark skies and it would not fit in the Mini shown in Meades advertising photo. The 2" 26mm wide angle lens supplied only has sharp focus in the centre with a ring of unfocussed stars around it.

I'll post a pic later on. The laptop looks like a palmtop beside it.

Kieran

Thanks for the honest appraisal of the scope Kieran, I'm very surprised by what you saw through the 26mm eyepiece, was the peripherals very unfocused or was it just noticeable?Was this evident using other eyepieces, what focal ratio is the scope ?

WOW! Not a full test cause I did not wait till full darkness before I broke it down and took it back into the house.

Jupiter very good at 21.50 with nice colours to the bands. At 23.00 it was nearly too bright to see the bands.

M13 even with a blue tint to the sky was a nest of needle point stars which got better later on as it darkened.

I then went hopping around the sky. M31 was quite good but again it was still not really dark but a lot better than I'd seen it before.

I quit early as I did not want to have to come clomping and banging into the house in the wee hours and get a rollicking since its a work day.

Its a heavy beast. Even the wooden base is hard to manhandle. I'd hate to have to carry it to dark skies and it would not fit in the Mini shown in Meades advertising photo. The 2" 26mm wide angle lens supplied only has sharp focus in the centre with a ring of unfocussed stars around it.

I'll post a pic later on. The laptop looks like a palmtop beside it.

Kieran

That's interesting Kieran.
Just did a check on the weight - Meade's spec sheet indicates that it would be about 1.8times heavier than the 16" I'm building at the mo.
As for the image quality, I hope you can resolve the issue causing the distortion - whether it be the optics or the eyepiece.

58lbs in primary housing & 54lbs in the wooden base.

I was wondering if the mirror temperature had not fully stabalised would it have out of focus stars at the edge of the eyepiece?

I should be able to check the eyepiece in a 12" Lightbridge on Saturday night.

The hardest part of setting up/breaking down is getting the top on and off the trusses, mainly due to size.

Hi Kieran,
Looking at it now, I see it differently since I got the 20", the upper and lower OTAs look good, but the wooden base looks like it could have been easily trimmed down and reduced in size, for instance those stylish side boards could have been made more minimally to reduce on weight, I'd bet you'd be easily able to put something together with 60 euros worth of wood that would do the same job as the base but would weight less, although might not look as good.