My New Telescope and its First Light

By Jason Mainville

As a newcomer to astronomy I have been viewing the heavens through many different types of telescopes at various star parties and related events, most of my viewing has been done with Rock Mallins' Meade 16" Dobsonian and Dynamax Criterion 8". After using these scopes for the past year or so it was now time to purchase my own scope. Due to the fact that I do not have a vehicle my options were limited to some of the smaller aperture scopes and after being spoiled with Rocks' light bucket 16" the question was now will I be content using a smaller scope? After a month or so of flipping through Meade catalogues Sky & Telescope Magazines and a good number of web sites I found that although my selection was to be based on portability I was not in any way limited.

Today's technology has produced some amazing advancements in optics so that even with a smaller scope some of the images can be breathtaking. Now without having a narrow selection in front of me my next question I had to ask myself was "how much do I want to spend?" Although scopes like the Meade ETX, Celestron C5, Omcon 90 mm Maksutov are extremely portable I am still partial to Newtonian telescopes for the simplicity of the design. Now even after narrowing my search by portability, price, and type of scope there were a few options and after looking at the scopes left on my list in comparison to the price for each and accessories included my choice was the Meade 4550 (4.5" Newtonian on a german equatorial mount). This would be the scope for me. A telephone call to Ray Khan in Toronto was the next step and it must have been my lucky day because after telling Mr. Khan what I was looking for he then told me that this particular scope was on sale. So it was ordered, Meade 4.5", German Equatorial Mount, MA25mm, MA9mm, 2x barlow, and Meade Star Navigator Software $349.00 cdn. All I had to do now was wait for the UPS truck. Well I now had the weekend to wait, realizing that I had never used that type of mount before I took the time to sift through the Meade web site and downloaded the manual so that I would be informed as to the mounting and balancing procedures when the scope arrived. Its now Monday afternoon and my scope has been delivered and the only thought going through my head was that I should have bought a solar filter so that I could use my new toy right then and there. That was one of the longest days I remember waiting for the sky to get dark.

First Light

With night having finally fell on our city it was time to give my scope the test. While in my backyard just off St.Laurent Blvd. with the flood lights blazing behind me and trying to focus through the trees I found the Orion Nebula. A few turns of the focuser and the four stars in the center of the Nebula snapped into focus. I was impressed, considering the conditions in the area I had a stunning view. But what had prompted me to write all of this gibberish was this past weekend, I met up with Rock at the Hallville-Winchester site on Saturday night (April 24) while he was doing some CCD imaging. That night we had a 72% moon and with my 4.5" we were able to view M57 ( Ring Nebula ) and M13 ( Globular Cluster ) I was truly impressed. One thing I was always told was that the true test for optics comes at high powers, with that I aimed the scope at Mars starting with the 25mm then adding the 2x barlow then using the 9 mm and then with the barlow giving me the equivalent of about 4.5mm in a 4.5" scope which is about 202x magnification, this is technically more than the you should use for a scope of this aperture however at this"power" the image was still reasonably sharp and I was almost able to pick out some detail, but on a scope that is f8 using 4.5mm eyepiece the image runs across your field of view very quickly. All in all I think for the beginner this is an excellent first scope for all around optical quality, price and portability.