USER OBSERVATIONS Last updated: 4 September 2005

Subject:	A New ETX 125 AT User...
Sent:	Saturday, September 3, 2005 06:12:07
From:	Myles at MCG (m.marcovitch@marcuscarrgroup.com)
I am a new visitor.
 
My ETX 125 AT is now a little over a month old and it has paid for
itself already in the joy that I've had with it. Living in Newtown, PA
(a 300+ year old community north of Philadelphia and near where
Washington crossed the Delaware to win the Battle of Trenton) night
skies are not very dark, especially looking south and east. Looking
north is a bit better since it looks up county towards less developed
areas. To increase the dark skies difficulty July and August as us
Easterners know were hot, hazy and high humidity and the skies were
terrible. To make matters even worse, my backyard backs up to woods and
there are big trees between my house and my neighbor's leaving just a
modest East/West viewing area. But I set up on the deck anyway.

On the first clear night of viewing, I had a clear shot of Jupiter, saw
a bunch of Messier objects, and the ring nebula. This was with a  moon
blazing on the other side of the house. I was in the house's shadow so
the moonlight didn't destroy my night vision.

Then I set it up in the front on another clear night and looked at the
half moon. Terrific! I also discovered that when it's aligned you can
manually point it at something and hit identify and it tells you what
you're looking at. AMAZING!

But the best fun came last week when I packed it up in the hard shell
case and took it to another part of our subdivision where there is a
wide open space, back towards the playing fields. I was far enough in to
be away from house lights, and was actually able to see the entire Big
Dipper  unlike behind my house where the woods blocks the bottom star of
the bowl and completely hides Polaris  and was able to get a very
accurate alignment. I saw almost the entire catalog of "tonight's best"
and was even able to start resolving individual stars in some globular
clusters. I saw Andromeda and could resolve the bulge, although it took
a lot of staring. To align north behind the house I used Google earth to
show an overhead view of our house on our street. North is clearly shown
on the picture and using CorelDraw and the image I determined that our
house is pointing about 12 degrees east of north. So I just angle the
telescope about 12 degrees off of perpendicular with the back of the
house and its pretty close.

Then came the coup de grace It started to show the planets that were out
that night. The only ones were Uranus and Neptune. These aren't usually
listed in the manuals since their so far and so faint for a medium size
telescope. Furthermore, they were low on the horizon AND they were
towards the bright sky that is looking south and east towards Philly.
But, wham! There was Uranus, round and blue. I was able to view it with
the Barlow and could clearly see its shape. The telescope tracked it
perfectly. Then I went for Neptune which was in the same general
direction and even lower in the sky. It came through also. It was
difficult to focus since the atmosphere wasn't cooperating, but hey I
was only out there about an hour and a half and saw perhaps fifteen
celestial objects that without this magical scope may have eluded me for
a lifetime.

It is a wonderful device that I am going to enjoy for many years. I have
a wish list of other accessories that will keep my kids busy for a long
time.

Questions 
	1 	What digital imaging system is reasonable to use with  the ETX 125?
	2 	Can they be used for deep sky or just planetary imaging?
	3 	What is the difference between a plossel and super plossel  eyepiece?
	4 	What is a plossel eyepiece anyway?
	5 	I have the standard Meade 28mm super plossel, and  purchased
	the Celeston lens set that includes some filters.
	6 	The Celestron eyepieces are just plossel not super.  What
	difference does this make? I do find that the Meade eyepiece is 
	easier to image in my eye. The 35mm Celestron forms its image above
	the  eyepiece so I have to float my eye above the eyecup. But they
	do focus and  the images are very good. I can't wait until October
	and November  skies and Orion comes up.
 
Myles Marcovitch

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