Tonight I took a whirl with the AR6 again, mounted on the Giro III. The mount handles the big refractor easily. Tonight I left the Orion V-block filter on the 2" diagonal.
I stuck with wide fields tonight, generally: The Double Cluster, M38, M36, M37, M35. These big clusters are amazing in this scope. Stars are pinpoint, sparkling jewels against a deep midnight blue background. I switched to 152x with the 8mm Hyperion on M37 and a double star just south of M37, nicely split. A magnification of 152x on this scope yields a 1mm exit pupil. Images stay quite bright but are magnified nicely, and in the 8mm Hyperion's wide field I do not need to move the scope often (the true field is nearly half a degree). Even so, the movements with the Giro III are smooth and easy. The first time I took the scope out I used a 5mm Stratus (less than one-third of a degree true field), and this is easily doable and enjoyable with this mount, though one has to move the scope more often.
I ended the night by splitting Rigel, a nice wide double at 152x, with a yellow white primary and a bright blue secondary. Then I went to pick up my daughters from a movie and came back to a cloudy sky and a fogged lens. Time to pack it in.
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