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[erikruud]

I found this on craigslist and the price was too good to pass up.

It's an Orion Apex 102mm Mak. The focal length is 1300mm.

Bag, OTA and Dew Shield.


OTA, Diagonal, and Solar Filter





Not very big or heavy.





They put the warning label on the bottom?


It came with this glass solar filter, so I don't need to worry about the warning.


It's a nice tight fit.

[erikruud]

And from the same seller, I got this to put it on.

iOptron E-Series Cube.


The E-Series comes with a basic hand controller. It uses a Vixen style dove tail mount.


After power on. The "Park Position" is azimuth facing south and scope pointing at the zenith.


There are 5,000 objects in the built in catalog.


Built in red flashlight.


"Cele" indicates that it is celestial tracking mode. It also has lunar and solar tracking modes. "Land" indicates that it is not tracking.


There are 5 manual slew speeds. the manual says that 256X is 1 degree per second and MAX is 4 degrees per second. I assume that means that 64x is 1/4 degree per second, 8x is 1/32 deg/sec and 2x is 1/128 deg/sec.

[erikruud]

I got all of this for less than the price of a new Cube or OTA alone. With the filter thrown in, I think I got a great deal.

Every thing appears to be in good shape.

The Mak has a camera tripod plate on it. The seller was using a block of wood screwed into the plate to mate it to the Vixen mount on the Cube. I am going to fabricate a better wooden dove tail bar until I can track down a proper plate.

[-=CROMAN=-]

Awesome! That's quite a deal!

I've been looking at the Ioptron mounts for a while now. Let us know what you think out it.

[erikruud]

I am hoping I get a chance to test them out tonight.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Nice.

C.A. Steve has that Mak and likes it.

The only thing is that Maks have a very thick meniscus front lens and some say that it takes longer to cool down. I like that mount set up and have wanted to see one up close.

It look like a fun assembly!

[erikruud]

I generally keep my scopes in the garage, so they are usually very close to the ambient temp.

I have read reviews that mention a 1 hour adjustment time.

[erikruud]

I did manage to spend about 30 minutes with the new gear last night.

I quickly fabricated at temporary dovetail from a scrap of oak that I had so I could mount the mak on the cube.

I took the assembly out onto my drive way and did what I could to get it plumb and aligned north and south.

The GoToNova system relies on starting in the "Park Position". The more accurate you get the "Park Position" set up the better the GoTo and tracking.

I used the digital level to get the scope as plumb as I could. Trying to level by sliding the legs in and out is a bit of a pain.

Trying to align north and south takes a bit of guess work. I think some sort of alignment jig with a compass on it would make it a lot easier. Anyway I did the best I could to line it up.

Then I powered up the mount, selected a one star alignment and chose Rigel. The mount promptly rotated around and was pointing in pretty much the right direction. At this point I was supposed to use the controller to adjust the aim, but it turned out that Rigel was just low enough that from the scopes point of view it was behind some tree branches.

So I started over and chose Betelgeuse. I tweaked the aim and hit enter. Now I was ready to start testing. For the first test I decide to go with a small slew and selected M42. The mount did it's thing and there was the Orion Nebula. The aim was a little low and a little to the right but the core of the nebula was in the FOV.

For the next, I chose Jupiter. Again the scope did it's thing, but this time the targeting was a little further off and Jupiter was not in the FOV. A quick adjustment to the left and up and there it was. I went through several of my eyepieces to see how they look in Mak. The plossl's both worked very well, with and without a barlow. The 6mm Agena EWA was a bit picky and I had some trouble getting it into sharp focus.

While testing the EP's the mount kept tracking and seemed be keeping Jupiter in the center of the FOV with just a touch of upward drift. Then Jupiter went behind a tree.

I then decided to try an even bigger slew. I noticed the Mars was a few degrees above roof of my house. This time the targeting was even further off and it took a couple minutes to get Mars in the FOV. I should mention that I didn't have any sort of finder attached to the scope. This was my first view of Mars, but the seeing was not great. Part of problem was probably from heat rising off the roof of my house.

Overall I was pleased. I need to see what I can do to make the initial set up easier. I also need to get a finder on this thing. I think it's time to fabricate a mount for one of my binocular objective finders.

I hope to get a little time to try some solar observing today.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Erik,

I used a binocular objective made finder for many years and was very happy with it.

It's good to know that the iOptron mount is doing what it's supposed to do and just needs some tweaking in the initial set-up before your sessions. As cool as the smartphone levelers are...there is nothing like an actual spirit level.

I'm anxious to hear how the solar testing comes out.

Pics please.

[erikruud]

So far the solar testing is a no go. Too many clouds.

[erikruud]

The clouds cleared up for a bit, so I quickly mounted the Mak on a photo tripod and put the solar filter on and ran outside.

First, I don't know what the people at Orion were thinking when the positioned the mounting plate. It's know where near the balance point. It's too far back, so the scope wanted to tilt down if I didn't crank down hard on the azimuth lock.

Anyway, I did get a nice view of the sun. It filled a large percentage of the field of view. It was white with only a slight yellow tint so it looked fairly natural.

The clouds quickly closed in again, but at least I know that I have a good solar scope set up.

[erikruud]

I also checked and a compass needs to be more than 4 inches away from the mount to work correctly.