Orion 120ST Telescope Kit

Slowly but surely my telescope kit is taking shape. Last night we walked to a local park to do some star gazing and took the whole thing along in a wagon. Here's what it looks like all packed up.

I bought the case a month or so ago. It was designed for Orion's 110ED scope, but it turns out that my 120ST fits in it quite nicely.
Here's a closeup of the case innards. It has slots for the diagonal, two 2" eyepieces and three 1.25" eyepieces.
And here's what it looks like fully assembled.
The wooden legs are also fairly new. It is an Oberwerk surveyor tripod that I found on sale for 50% off. The legs are longer and more stable than the stock aluminum legs that come with the Voyager mount. I played around with the height for a while before settling on where it is. I raised the legs about 4 inches which allows me to see almost the whole sky from a seated position. Objects too near the horizon still require a standing position, but for the most part I can sit leisurely while stargazing.

The only drawback is that I have to squat down close to the ground in order to find objects with the EZFinder.

There are only a couple of things left to get to complete my portable telescope kit. First, I need a wide field eyepiece. The Ethos lest me see 2.17 degrees of sky at 46X. I'm thinking about a 23mm Axiom which would give me 3.14 degrees at 26x. Alternately, I'm considering jumping all the way to a 31mm or 36mm Hyperion Aspheric, which would broaden the field of view to 3.72 or 4.32 degrees respectively. (A degree is about the width of 2 full moons).

Also, I still want a new focuser. I'm seriously considering getting a Moonlite, but they are a bit pricey so it will involve saving up for it. We'll see. The stock focuser is really annoying, though and does need to be improved somehow.

Anyway, the park last night was a bit disappointing. We set up the scope near second base on one of the local ball fields. This gave us a nice wide swath of sky to view and we got to look at Saturn again. However, there were people playing tennis nearby and the court flood lights were so bright I could read by them a couple of hundred yards away. Very annoying. It turns out that my backyard it a better vewing spot due to the lack of gigantic stadium sized flood lights.

Oh well. We're starting to plan our summer vacations which will be at various dark sky spots around northern Michigan and away from big city lights. I can't wait to see some really wide field views of the summer Milky Way from a very dark site. I'm getting very excited about it.

Saturn

Most of the objects I've been looking at in the night skies are star clusters or nebulae. This hasn't really interested my son Simon very much.

Tonight though, we went out looking at Saturn and the 120ST proved itself on the ringed planet very nicely. First we checked it out at 46x with the 13mm Ethos and then tried again at about 140x with my 4.3mm Antares eyepiece. Both images were very sharp, although focusing at 140x was tough.

Mostly I was pleased to try out the 80mm stop down mask I had built and was very pleased that I saw no color fringing at all with the mask on. It is likely that I would see more color if the sky was darker. I think the light pollution actually helps keep the color down because the object is not as relatively bright as it would be otherwise.

I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't see any planetary detail, though. It was just a white disc with the rings at a very sharp angle. Simon thought it rocked, though. He was jumping up and down. He loves the planets so much that they have actually been elevated to the status of "imaginary friend" (he is 7 years old) and he holds them very dear. It was quite something for him to see the real, live Saturn in the sky with his own eyes.

So, I'm pleased so far with how the 120ST is working on the planets. I'm toying with the idea (some day, not soon) of getting a different sort of telescope just for the planets, but I'm not sure what that one would be yet. Something to think about...

If you're curious, here is a YouTube video that shows that Saturn looks like through a small telescope. The only difference between this video and what I saw tonight is that the image in my scope was totally white, with no yellow / orange tinting. Oh, and the angle of the rings was much sharper as well, and nearly edge on. They will, in fact, be seen edge on from the Earth in early September of this year, before gradually coming to a maximum angle about 18 years from now. (I think it will take 18 years. I pulled that number from memory but will have to verify it to make sure.)