8" DSH first impressions

I tried to post this first thing this morning, only to find I babble too much and the post was too long. So I'm trying again, this time in two parts.
My 8" Deep Space Hunter arrived yesterday morning. It took a while to put together, mainly because I'm easily distracted and spent too much time fiddling with the finderscope and things. But I had no problem getting it all together and was very happy to see that the collimation looked fine. Now, I admit, I'm hardly very experienced at that sort of thing and am going to have someone who knows what he's doing look at it, but for now all is well. So here's what happened when it got dark...


short version:
-the finderscope bracket is cheesy, but works okay
-the 9mm Astrola plossl eyepiece kinda stinks, but the 25mm is very decent
-40-something pounds is a lot heavier than it should be at 4:30am
-cheap it may be, but this scope is awesome!!

longer version:
Due to a certain annoying gas shortage out here in Arizona, I was stuck at home. I set up on my balcony, which has a limited but acceptable view of the eastern sky. Unfortunately, the darker it got, the more clouds moved in. I was barely able to get the finderscope aligned before clouds ate the entire sky. So I pulled a fast one on the Cloud Gods and went to bed, with the alarm set for 3am. That was when the fun began!

on to part two...

...and now for the rest of the story

Since the moon was hanging right there in front of me, I decided to take a peek at it. Then I discovered that it's really weird trying to get a big scope to go where I want it without the benefit of an equatorial mount. (And no, I've never had a Dob before...) But I found the moon and the first of many exclamations was heard floating off my balcony.
The 25mm eyepiece was really nice, in fact I was surprised at how clear and sharp the image was. So I switched to the 9mm and wasn't too thrilled. It was very hard to focus and had lousy eye relief. So back to the 25mm I went.
After about a half hour of ooh-ing and aah-ing, I just started moving the scope around to see what I could see, not really aiming at anything. I ran across a few doubles and surprised myself by actually *looking* at them (I'm not all that big on splitting doubles). Very cool. But then I ran across an open cluster and almost fell off my chair. I've no clue which one it was, since I was just scanning the sky at random, but I was amazed by how sharp and clear the image was. And this was under the Phoenix light dome from hell! There were some very bright stars that almost looked like they were coming out of the eyepiece at me, a couple long pretty star chains, and quite a few blue and reddish stars. Gorgeous! The view was easily as good or better than what I've seen through far more expensive scopes.
Then I decided to actually aim for something, and Saturn came to mind. I've always had a thing for Saturn, since it's a cool looking planet, but I've never seen it through a scope as more than a fuzzy blob, which was all my old scope could show me. So I aimed at what I thought was Saturn and there it was! It was tiny, but perfect. No detail, just a little round ball with a big impressive ring, but it was Saturn. I tried the other eyepiece and the little image got a little bigger, but no more detail.
Then I thought I'd haul the scope out front and try for Mars. That was when I discovered that there's no way in heck I'm carrying that sucker down the stairs at 4:30am, especially since I'd have to make several trips. So I went back to bed.
In all, I think that scope is more than a good deal. More like it borders on insanely underpriced, and no, I'm not complaining. I can't wait for the weekend, so I can haul it out of town and see what it can do under dark skies.

~Denise