Night of the Cometron......

Have been meaning to post this earlier, but as usual life gets in the way. But yes as the title says, the Cometron CO60 is here!!! Was waiting patiently for it to arrive via FedEx before the weekend (person selling it said that he got it sent out on Wed last week). Parcel did not arrive till late Sat evening. Only discovered that it had arrived when I went to take the trash out. Man was I shaking with excitement. I felt like a kid at christmas time again, or a kid in a candy store....well I need not elaborate you guys and gals know what I mean ya! Don't you love that tingle when you get something to play with in the mail ;)

So with adrenaline pumping through my veins, I hastily tore up the wrapping paper only to find that the seller had placed styrofoam pieced on both sides of the grey Cometron box. And he had stuck the styrofoam down with clear tape. I had a nice time trying to remove the styrofoam while trying preserve the original box. Can you tell not that I don't like styrofoam. I much prefer bubble wrap. It is just neater. 

Anywho after spending some time trying to carefully remove the styrofoam from the grey box, I finally managed to get to the best part...opening the box. Once I lifted the lid of the box, there it was.......a nice grey tubed CO60. After gawking at how nice the OTA looked, I looked around the box (which has styrofoam packing peanuts (again????) and found all the pieces required to assemble the scope. Did not take me long to figure out where all the parts went. I did not even need to consult the users manual (which by the way was lovingly preserved as well by the original owner...even had the guarantee card!). I especially liked the hardwood tripod. Its light years ahead of the three one piece wooden legs that would not even extend on my old CO40. Niceeeee. Also the scope came with a brilliant solid one piece accessory tray, Celestron/Vixen 25mm and 10mm fully coated Kellner's (noted by the bluish cast on the lenses...just like the main objective lens), a T18 lens, as well as a crummy 5x20mm finder on a metal three screw bracket. I have no clue what this is but I am assuming that the T stands for terrestrial. What I like about the CO60 over the CO40, nice extendable legs (you will have to unscrew the wingnuts and change the height and then rescrew the wingnuts as the legs do not extend by sliding like the newer tripods do) and solid accessory tray. Also the spread of the legs can be adjusted easily. All you have to do is not screw the wingnuts that hold the accessory tray to the tripod legs down all the way. With that you can just pull the legs outwards, or vice versa to spread and contract the legs as the tray would just slide in or out into position. Excellent stuff!

With all the good stuff out of the way, what do I not like about this scope. I found myself not liking the same things I did not like on my older firstscope, the CO40. Well well firstly it shares the same crummy "way too small to be useful" piece of crap 5x20mm finder that is so hard to focus because the focusing eyepiece is always loose. To top that off, I believe the front objective is also a one piece outfit, leading to horrible chromatic aberration. Also did not enjoy the finders mounting bracket as it is one of them three screw ones that is next to impossible to align...did appreciate that it was cast metal though.

Now for the super fun part....scope testing. Surprise surprise no new/old scope curse (well the curse is definately alive and well as the weekend after I got he scope, we got clouds, and I mean heaps of them as well as rains (apparently rare for LA!)). Under not so perfect skies due to a waxing and almost full moon, I tested the scope out on some bright DSO's (well that turned into one DSO), good old Jupiter and the moon. From memory these small scopes really excel on bright solar system objects like planets and the moon. The scope did not disappoint. Jupiter, a little past opposition was nevertheless quite impressive at 80x (10mm Kellner with the 800mm focal length). I am not sure if it was experience, or if it was a very good opposition but I though I could make out minute detail in the cloud bands, and not just the NEB (SEB still invisible). But then again Jupiter is always impressive. I then moved on to see if I could "identify" M57, the Ring Nebula. It was harder than I though thanks "totally too small and worthless" finder. I think a good match for this scope would be one of them red dot non magnifying finders. But as always my persistence pays off and I finally found M57. Faint but definately there. Will need better skies to "kick the tyres" again as it wasn't the clearest of skies plus the moon was almost full. For fun I placed the Orion SkyGlow Filter in front of the eyepiece and there it was....more DSO testing to come for sure.

And guess what...all the talk about me dodging the "new scope curse" proved unfounded. A week after getting the scope, the weather has been absymal. Clouds and rains (yup not just a sprinkle but actual rain!). And it is still raining after like 3 days!!!! Can't wait for it to be clear again so I can scope out Comet Hartley......