Vixen’s First Light

It wasn’t much on ceremony but last night’s First Light for my new Vixen VC200L was a success. I think I’m going to get a lot of use and enjoyment out of this scope.

Vixen set up on the patio in 29°F night air, about to endure its First Light checkout.

After a bit of fussing with the Meade LXD-75 mount, I was able to align the mount and punched in the commands to aim at the Great Orion Nebula. Now, that choice for First Light may seem pedestrian but Orion was beautifully positioned, the seeing was only so-so, and heck, it’s a beautiful sight!

The scope swung obediently to the correct area and after a slight manual nudge to center it, M42 came into view. The view through the eyepiece was filled with ghostly fog, filaments and voids began to appear as my eye picked out the details. Nestled in the floss were the four brilliant stars of the Trapezium. As I mentioned earlier, seeing was but fair and light pollution made it all the worse so contrast between sky and nebula wasn’t high; still, given conditions, it was an impressive start.

I tried to find other deep sky objects but with no success. Lousy seeing seemed to be getting worse. So, though high overhead, I punched in my request to GoTo The Pleiades.

After a good bit of whining and whirring (the mount has never been quiet, some say it sounds like a kitchen blender) a few brilliant stars appeared in the eyepiece. Not what I was expecting while using a 25 mm eyepiece, I realized magnification was higher than I was used to — this scope has an 1,800 mm focal length. I’m going to have to get a longer focal length eyepiece or two if I want to see larger objects like The Seven Sisters or, for that matter, the Orion Nebula.

I did notice a touch of nebulosity around some of the brilliant stars of The Pleiades and I don’t recall ever seeing that before and I’ve looked at that star cluster frequently over many years. Thank you, Vixen!

The final effort of the night was to attach a camera to the telescope and try a quick first image through the new optics; that didn’t work. I’m not worried and will figure that out later.

For now, the VC200L provides a solid platform, beautiful imagery, in an easy-to-handle package. I’m looking forward to going out on a better night and enjoying a fresh look at the cosmos.