Christmas Present 2007

For Christmas, I received my first Telescope. It's a little short tube refractor sold as Konus. I believe that it's made by Synta and is the same as the Skywatcher ST80. Some details. It's an 80mm objective refractor with a 400mm focal length. The finder that came with it, is a tad useless, just removing the lens caps are enough to knock the alignment out. I replaced it with a red dot finder (Baader Skysurfer III) and this is much better. I've also invested in a few second hand eye pieces and a barlow. Here are a couple of pics.
Setup

Packed in a Maplins Flight Case


In the case now (a couple of minor changes) I have
Plossls : 32mm, 20mm, 10mm, 6.5mm
Ortho : 5mm
Barlow : Tal x2
One 90 degree mirror diagonal (Cheap and plasticky, soon to be replaced)
One 45 degree prism diagonal (as supplied, but better quality)
One 30 mm extension tube (now with new and improved attached Fringe Killer)
One modded AA maglight (it's now red)
Baader Skysurfer III red dot finger
An odd green thingy that I think is supposed to be a moon filter. Tried it once and it really didn't help. Not sure why it's still there, guess I just haven't got around to tossing it out yet.

Being able to get all this in the case, means that when I go camping etc, I can take it all with me and should it ever stop raining (it always rains when I go camping, so I will apologise now to whichever Astronomers are in the area when I next go).

And a brief first light (29th December 2007) :

Finally had a chance to get it outdoors just now as the clouds have cleared up and our nearest neighbour is hovering there. The scope came with a rather flimsy feeling 5x24 finder on a plastic finder mount, all of which twists and turns when removing and replacing the caps, but I was able to allign it and use it. The scope came with a 17mm and 10mm Plossl, I'm not sure how good they are, but I was able to get clear view of the moon through both of them with little evidence of purple fringing (or maybe that's just me eyes ). With the 10mm, giving 40x view, I was able to see quite some detail on the surface and the moon nearly filled the FOV. It seems to me that this is a good little scope, will make a great grab 'n go scope, seeing as it will also fit in the Maplins flight case it'll be good for taking on holiday, and give's me something to use, that still has a reasonable field of view as a step between the Bin's and a reflector.