Merry Cosmic Christmas and Happy Astronomical New Year!

Happy 2012, Astro fans!

What a happy holiday it was. Family, food, and astronomical pressies! Yes, Christmas is the amateur astronomers best friend. Evidently I was a very good boy and received a brand new Crayford focuser for my telescope.

Here it is, the new William Optics DDG Synta focuser, the DDG standing for digital display gauge. The DDG tells you precisely, to two decimal points in millimetre, how much you've pulled the focus. Along with the 10:1 gear ratio focusing knob, this focuser really is fantastic!

William Optics say on their site; "Solid as a rock, smooth like a feather". Apart from being brilliantly cheesy with their wording, they could be less wrong. The motion when pulling focus really is silky smooth and there is absolutely zero wobble or travel in the tube. In short, it's miles ahead of the stock rack and pinion focuser supplied with the Celestron Omni XLT 120mm refractor.

As you can see, it is a much more substantial focuser and looks stunning. A few minor niggles I'd have with it is that the DDG is slightly glitchy and likes to display random numbers every few turns of the focus knob. The focus tube is ...