Retrofit of the 30cm Cassegrain telescopen

Last night it was a relatively clear night. Seeing wasn't so good and the transparency was medium. It was freezing cold. A lot of dew on the eyepieces. Good enough to test the retrofitted 12" Cassegrain.
Did the collimation with a laser and the startest showed that the Cassegrain was almost perfect collimated.
The first object was Jupiter. The first versions of the Cassegrain wasn't a great performer a high magnifications so not well suited for planets and the moon. The main problem was the cooling down time of the large piece of glass of the primary mirror. The 3 ventilators solved this problem largely. No more internal turbulence in the tube. The image of Jupiter was steady and crisp sharp. The transitions of Io of Europa could clearly been followed. Saw the shadows and the discs of the two moons moving over Jupiter's clouds. The first time I could so clearly observe Jupiter at 250X.
The Cassegrain always performed well on dim deepsky objects. Was curious if this would still be the case. It should be better because the mirrors have new coatings and the baffling should be better. Indeed the Cassegrain performed much better than before. In the original version it wasn't possible to use wide angle eyepieces such as the Nagler 31mm. Too much vignetting. Now with the new Feathertouch focuser and the baffling the Nagler eyepieces can be used.
chased some galaxies in Leo. No problem to observe the Triplet and also M95, 96 and 105. Also some smaller galaxies were easy visible. Much better than before.
The combination of the heavy (30kg) Cassegrain and the Fullerscopes MK IV mount is very pleasant for visual observations.

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Xavier 1 mars 2016 at 3:38

Last night it was a relatively clear night. Seeing wasn't so good and the transparency was medium. It was freezing cold. A lot of dew on the eyepieces. Good enough to test the retrofitted 12" Cassegrain.
Did the collimation with a laser and the startest showed that the Cassegrain was almost perfect collimated.
The first object was Jupiter. The first versions of the Cassegrain wasn't a great performer a high magnifications so not well suited for planets and the moon. The main problem was the cooling down time of the large piece of glass of the primary mirror. The 3 ventilators solved this problem largely. No more internal turbulence in the tube. The image of Jupiter was steady and crisp sharp. The transitions of Io of Europa could clearly been followed. Saw the shadows and the discs of the two moons moving over Jupiter's clouds. The first time I could so clearly observe Jupiter at 250X.
The Cassegrain always performed well on dim deepsky objects. Was curious if this would still be the case. It should be better because the mirrors have new coatings and the baffling should be better. Indeed the Cassegrain performed much better than before. In the original version it wasn't possible to use wide angle eyepieces such as the Nagler 31mm. Too much vignetting. Now with the new Feathertouch focuser and the baffling the Nagler eyepieces can be used.
chased some galaxies in Leo. No problem to observe the Triplet and also M95, 96 and 105. Also some smaller galaxies were easy visible. Much better than before.
The combination of the heavy (30kg) Cassegrain and the Fullerscopes MK IV mount is very pleasant for visual observations.

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