'Voyager' takes on several passengers for a maiden journey

My Astro_Tech Voyager alt-az mount arrived yesterday - this is going to get A LOT of use! This is the rpelacement for the little Ioptron "Cube" - only the Cube is completely automatic and this is completely mnual and cost more. The Voyager is very impressive so far. My only concern is height of eyepiece when viewing near zenith and they're talking about offering an extension that I assume will solve that.

Had clear skies tonight, so gave it a good workout with an Astro-Tech 66 refractor, an Orion 80ED, refractor, and Celestron 5-inch NexStar SCt. All worked fine. With the NextStar I cranked it up to 250X on the moon and had no problems tracking and the dampening was very quick - hardly noticeable. The 8-day moon is one of my favorites and tonight the "sword" - or "straight wall" was absolutely fabulous - perfect lighting.

With the AT66 all was well. But with both it and the 80ED - but especially the 80 ED - I started to run into problems near the zenith. I used both the refractors on Castor when it was 79 degrees altitude and I ended up 9-inches off the ground which is the lowest my observing chair goes. To point any higher I would need to sit on the ground. That's not my favorite way to observe. Not a big issue. I seldom look at anything that close to the zenith - but still, if that's where your target is, you want to go there.

As for Castor, it was wonderful - three nice, crisp, round dots right where they're supposed to be. The 80ED, it seems, is somewhat better in providing a "snap-to focus" experience. That is, the focus point is reache easier and quicker than with the AT66. It also seems just right for this mount. The mount seems to dwarf the AT66. And it, in turn, seems dwarfed by an 8-inch SCT. The 80ED and the 5-inch SCT seemed just right. (More about the 8-inch later. )

I have to say, this is my fourth piece of equipment from Astro-Tech and I remain impressed. Yes, I want an eyepiece tray. OK, the spreaders could have better matched the rest of the construction. But overall, I really like it.

With my Obsession with ServoCat and ArgoNavis I can go completely manual, use just the ArgoNavis as digital setting circles, or be completely "go to" - and I use it all three ways, depending on mood, task, and patience. I'd love to see that kind of flexibility in a mount for small refractors. But short of that, I'll take Voyager and go low-tech.

I went to bed expecting the clouds to close in as predicted. Didn't happen. It was beautiful last night and still very nice at 3:30 am this morning - and this on a night when new equipment arrives - what gives?

I put the Voyager through more tests, I tried the Celestron NexStar 8 - about 14 pounds with diagonal and the Hyperion eyepieces, I believe - and it worked fine. Yes, it took longer for the heavier scope to steady down. Last night I used a 66mm, 80mm, and 127mm on the Voyager and was hardly aware of vibration issues. With the 8-inch most of the vibration came from focusing the scope. Moving it with the slow motion controls seemed to create less vibration than focusing. At worse it was about three seconds.

Inpractical terms this did not stop me from starting with an excellent view of the Double Double, fairly low in the east. It split cleanly and I had no problems tracking it - though at 250X I find myself wondering whether I really want to live with this sort of manual approach. I miss tracking more than I do the "go-to" function.

One concern I do have simply because most of my observing is done when instructing beginners is that a newbie might reach in the dark and find the wrong knob, loosening the scope on its mount. For anyone familiar with it this is hard to do - both size and tension on the knob that holds the scope are different - and the smaller screw (which I assume is there primarily as a safety measure?) seemed to hold the scope if I loosened the main one. But I wasn't keen on testing this too far in the cold and dark ;-) I guess my druthers would be an entirely different style knob. Not a big issue - but last night I watched one beginner fumble around searching for the azimuth knob and end up putting her hand on the locking one. Using the slow motion extention would help this situation as well, something I haven't done yet.

I am pleased with how smoothly this scope moves when not using the slow motion controls. This morning was totally impromptu and I had no charts or plan, so I had to sweep a bit to find M92 and this went very well. I even found myself making adjustment at 250X without using the slow motion controls, though I like them better when I think to use them.

Interesting aside - I really was entranced by M13 in the 8-inch. It's been along time since I've used anything more than a 5-inch and I found I reallya ppreciated the higher resolution and brightness that the 8-inch offers. I'm convinced that we should treat light - and the light-grasp of scopes - as a dimension. It's really useful to look at object not only at different magniifications, but with different amounts of light. M35, for example, takes on a much different appearance in a small scope - not a bad one, nor a d good one, but a different one. It's like seeing different layers of the object and this is helpful.

Bottom line - the 8-inch works for me on this mount, but I enjoy the mount more when I use the small refractors on it and keep the powers down below 125X - about their limit. And, of course, I bought it for these refractors - using the cats on it as well are just a bonus from my perspective. I have to be careful. My temptation always is to push something past it's intended use and that's stupid.