I joined in last night's observation (2nd Oct 04). It was a mad rush for me 'cos my equipment is still rather foreign to me and I haven't sorted out the logistic part. Weixing, the organiser of the regular observation sessions at Tampines, was interested to see my LXD55 setup. So I had to transport more than 20kg of equipment + accessories to the site. But I'm glad I did because the guys were a great help! At least now I know how to go about using the LXD55 autostar in my next obs.

The session lasted till 3.45am this morning. The sky was ok with the clouds coming and going. We spent the 1st few hours trying to figure out how to use the GOTO mount and Autostar. Finally we had to call up another friend Richard for help. He came after 12midnight.

Even though we managed to carry out the 2-Star alignment procedure, there seemed to be some problems still. I tried to slew to Orion Nebula (M42), but it's a bit off. When I tried to slew to Saturn, it was way off. Perhaps we didn't do the polar north alignment part properly because we didn't have a compass. (Must go buy one soon!)

I took a few shots through the Skywatcher 127MCT with the EOS20D + T-ring. Settings of ISO800 to 3200 were used with various shutter speeds between 6" to 20". The ISO800+20" shot is shown here.


The 4 stars in the trapezium are nicely resolved. At least I know the mount is tracking well cos there was no star trails though exposure was 20". I took some shots thru Weixing's 6" Newtonian without the tracking. Star trails could be seen for shutter speed of 25".

The moon was really very bright, adding to the overall light-pollution.

There were 6 of us there - Weixing, Elton, Richard, Clemens & Carloqambino. Here are the photos taken by Richard of us playing with our toys. Overall it's been a very a fun session for me. I went to bed at 5am this morning, tired but very happy!

The universe awaits..........

I bought the 2nd hand set of LXD55 mount and 8" Newtonian scope from a friend in Singastro. So 3 weeks back, I have no scope, now I suddenly have 3! A 3" Firstscope refractor, a 5" MCT and now a humongous 8" C-8N reflector. Oh boy!

But I'm going through the curse of being a new scope owner.... continuous lousy, cloudy, rainy weather. I managed to see the double-double and Albireo on my 1st night with the 5" MCT. That's about it. :(

Most likely will trade the C8N for something smaller. It's too huge for me to lug around even though I drive. A more compact C5 ~ C8 SCT would be ideal.

Haven't got much chance to test out the 20D fully. I was feeling lazy, partly due to the lousy weather. Waiting for the sunny weather to try Infrared with this baby.