Fun with Orion ST-80 and SmartEQ

Being disappointed with my images of PANSTARRS comet, I decided to try to put together something with a little more ooph. I didn't relish the thought of lugging my C8/Sirius combo to my spot south of town for a brief window of imaging the comet, so I wanted something a lot more portable. I took the Orion short tube 80 achromatic refractor and mounted it on a spare dovetail. I tried it out last night with the iOptron SmartEQ mount. Haze and thin clouds made the comet a pointless target, I couldn't even see it with binos, but I did take the rest of the evening to enjoy the little refractor before the clouds and wind shut me down. 

I have to say that I really had fun. I didn't expect to enjoy the little el-cheapo refractor as much as I did, and despite the chromatic aberration present as expected, the views were really impressive to me. I have no experience with APO or semi-APO ED refractors, but I did enjoy this cheap little scope. I didn't spend too much time polar aligning (just pointed north and threw caution to the wind). Visual tracking was great and after syncing on the moon and M42, goto's were surprisingly good, even on the other side of the meridian without any sync'd targets to the east. Mizar was dead on after slewing from m45. Oh yeah, m45 and m42 kept me glued to the eyepiece for over an hour. So much fun to have a scope setup that doesn't herniate me to setup and can be setup and slewing in about 3 minutes. Really put some fun back into astronomy for me.

I hope in the next several days that I have some luck with using it with the mallincam (focus with extension tube) and comet PANSTARRS. Of course I will post up results!

Let me again take the opportunity to praise the iOptron SmartEQ mount. It is so much fun, and it just works. It's light weight and super quick setup makes it a blast to use. The short tube 80/ SmartEQ combo is wonderful and means I will be able to observe and possibly do some minor imaging on a whim vs. a 1 hour setup.