A belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone! I do hope everyone had a fantastic time over the holidays.

Well, Santa has been very kind to me this year, and on Christmas morning I awoke to a huge box in the living room – it had been too big to wrap, and anyway I knew what I was getting lol!! So, I am now the proud owner of a Skywatcher Explorer 150PL. it was ordered from RVO at 4pm on Thursday afternoon, and arrived early on Saturday morning – great service!! I had um’d and ah’d for ages on what OTA to get, and I finally settled on the PL. To me, it seems to be a good compromise between focal length, portability and aperture. It will be perfect to get me back into observing once again. I think the mirrors will need collimating – that’s a given, right?? My daughter got me a collimating eyepiece and I have been reading up on how to do it – hopefully I can manage to do it without too many problems!!

The tube has come with rings, dove tail bar, 10mm and 25mm eyepieces, a 2 x Barlow and a 30mm finder scope. I think I will be after a 90 degree finder at some point to make things a bit easier. I have mounted it onto my NEQ3-2 mount, and it balances ok. I think the mount it at is limit, but for observing it will be fine until I have saved for the HEQ5. Can’t wait to get it out under the stars, however, the weather forecast is cloud for the next week at least . . .  sigh!! I guess that is the fabled curse of new scope owners everywhere!!

So – lets hope that the clouds clear soon. I can see blue sky at the moment . . . just hoping it stays that way!

Happy New Year everyone, and pop back again when the next entry will be following my first evening with the PL!!

Cheers

Nige