
Last week, I finally star tested the scope and found it to have a 'soft' focus, and an internal reflection of some sort, which made it impossible to observe anything. But on the other hand, during the evening's attempts, I found the old retaining ring, which had gotten loose somehow, and was stuck at the mid-point inside the dew shield, where it couldn't be seen from either end. A few minutes on my drill press the next morning had the retaining ring tapped for hold-down screws and installed where it belongs... Of course, this being New England, I had to wait three days for another clear evening to see if the retaining ring had improved the view through the scope.
When Mark heard I was going to take the scope out for another test run last night, he kindly offered to come over and apply his experienced eye to the objective to see if he could figure out the problem(s). We decided to keep the scope here, rather than test it at Brian's, since Mark was fairly certain that we would need to disassemble the objectives at some point, and we wanted my tools and workbench handy.
I set the scope out to cool at 1815, and went in to supper. At 1900, I set the scope on Polaris, and found the same internal reflection as before. A flashlight showed that there was no moisture on or between the elements, and a star test showed a spectacular set of diffraction rings, so the collimation was not suspect. Mark showed up shortly afterward, and he checked Polaris, M45, and M42, and saw the same problem as I had. Nonetheless, we could see 4 stars in the Trapezium with little difficulty, even at a fairly low magnification, so we knew the problem must be minor. Mark suspected that one of the elements of the objective had gotten reversed during the time the retaining ring was 'missing' and only a cardboard aperture mask was holding the objective in place.


Rushing outside to test the scope, we found the internal reflection gone, the collimation still good, and the views to be spectacular. My subdivision is more correctly described as semi-urban, rather than suburban, with a distinct sky glow from Fall River, two streetlights abutting my house lot, and several neighbors who feel that porch lights add ambiance to the night. Because this was an 'equipment testing night' rather than an 'observing session' per se, we were working on my driveway, which is the worst spot in my yard to observe. And then my son's cat kept tripping the garage light sensor, which didn't help, but he's such a friendly cat that it's hard to complain. He's become a faithful companion on cold nights when I'm observing alone in the yard. Except that he has tried to get inside my big dob on several occasions... while I'm observing

Given the light situation here, we still ran several targets, with the Trapezium showing five stars at 166x, the Cassini Division on Saturn (along with about four or five moons), and some nice views of M45. We tried several filters on M42, and found that this little scope gets some fairly decent details within the nebula. We tried to pull in some galaxies, to no avail, and Mars was too high to view with such a long scope, which nearly drags the eyepiece on the ground when aimed at zenith. We spent some time trying to find the Flame Nebula, also without success, and we tried but failed to split the Pup from Sirius. As the night had progressed, the sky was deteriorating, and we had developed some serious 'boiling' in the field of view at high powers.
The rest of the evening was occupied with diffraction ring and Airy disk tests, which revealed that this little wonder is back in action, and ready for some dark skies. By 2200, we both had frozen toes and sagging enthusiasm, so we called it a night. A short night, surely, but sweet nonetheless. I had wanted to get this scope working for the Mars opposition, but sat on my thumbs for too long. So now it will get a workout on Saturn and Jupiter as springtime moves along. This is also an excellent tool for double stars and galaxies (under a dark sky!), and I hope to give it a good workout in the coming months.