When I focus on a bright star near the zenith, I seem to see the ghost of
the secondary mirror and obstruction. It looks like the ring nebula in a
way. Is this normal? I have no experience with SC telescopes having only
owned a reflector in the past. I do not remember seeing this ghost image in
the past observations using an 8" reflector. It has been unusually cloudy
in South Florida lately so I have not done as much observing as I want to
to see if this ghost shows up elsewhere besides one bright star near the
Zenith. I have been able to reproduce this image. ,It does not seem to be
a problem in other areas. I first noticed the ghost while looking for the
Horsehead nebula near the bright star in the belt of Orion adjacent to the
nebula.

Could the Ghost image be caused by my absolutely lousy,(even for the
untrained eye) 25 mm eyepiece that came with my LX50. This has got to be
one of the worst eyepieces money can buy. I am ordering two new eyepieces
ASAP.

One of the eyepieces I want is an illuminated recticle eyepiece so I can
polar align and guide my first attempts at piggyback astrophotography
(mirror flop and all, got to start somewhere). I have read that some
people are having problems with the brightness of the Meade version. Is
there any other recommendations for illuminated
eyepiece?

Finally, I am trying to star test my scope and did have some success in
seeing the dark rings that fit inside the donut that is actually the star
is out of focus. The hole I assume is the obstruction. The rings seem to
be dancing around the donut hole and I can actually seem to increase their
intensity by getting closer but not too close to focus. The rings are
there, dark ring, bright area then dark ring and so forth. They do not
seem to be stable but I am attributinh this to seing conditions.
Can anyone comment especially on the star test.

Thanks ahead of time. I hope one day I can help everyone as much as I have
been helped by Mapug

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