JOC

You won't find them until you've got enough post counts by chatting in the astro sections of SGL

Always a shame to lose a regular contributor, many thanks to his cousin for taking the time to let everyone know about what happened.

This might be the manual for it, and it seems to include some instructions on how to use it as a camera lens https://www.bushnell.com/on/demandware.static/-/Library-Sites-HuntShootAccessoriesSharedLibrary/default/dw65ab154c/productPdfFiles/bushnellPdf/Product Manuals/Spotting-Scopes/PDF/78-1600_Discoverer.pdf

and anything branded 'National Geographic' and sold in boxes full of colour pictures and promising anything more than about x250 magnification in the UK. My standard piece of advice is, if you don't look anywhere else for advice my standing goodie as a fellow beginner is to look at the first page here and even if you don't read the text, look at the pictures on the first page and get your expectations in tact. Try and get a Skywatcher 150P perhaps, and remember that the small pictures are probably representative of what can be seen with a Skywatcher 200P (an 8" mirror refractor)

Agreed - I always take a look at the moon if it's around. I find it amazing along the terminator line and often around the edge of the disk at just how the mountains and valleys show up, you wouldn't think you'd be able to see such magnificent amounts of detail but you can.

At that price point you tend to look through a telescope with the naked eye through an eyepiece that fits into the focussing part of the telescope. If you buy from a decent telescope supplier you will likely get one or two basic eyepieces (EPs) often around 25mm and 10mm to get started with. These will be sufficient for the first few months to show son the moon etc. The 10mm will show the moon apparently more close up than the 25mm, but the moon will initially be easier to find in the sky using the 25mm - you tend to get the object you desire in view and then carefully swap in the higher mag (lower number mm) EP without moving the telescope to see things closer. To take a photo as already mentioned some scopes let you buy a holder that a mobile phone can be fitted into to allow the use of the phone camera. Just as easy is if you have a DSLR - when purchase of something called a T ring for your camera (and maybe an adapter on the scope) allows you to unscrew the camera lens and fit it to the focusser on the telescope (which then acts like the camera lens) and take a really nice photo (my avatar is one I took like that with my 200P scope). Also, as above. Don't be misled by hype and what it is claimed it is possible to see, i.e. don't get a scope from the likes of Amazon, Nat. Geographic, Currys etc. Get a scope from a proper scope dealer like FLO who sponsor SGL (other good telescope suppliers also exist!). I would commend a quick whizz through this thread - if you do nothing more than look at the pictures it will modify your expectations. I think the small images are through something like a 200P - So 8" rather than the 100P you might be looking at, but IMO all the larger mirror does is grab more light and makes very distant objects brighter. It tends to be the EP's that do most of the magification - although a bigger mirror ultimately permits higher magnifications to be successfully used I've found in the UK that my 8" scope doesn't perform hugely well except in the odd really ideally literally once in a blue moon conditions at much above x240 magnification - thats a 1200mm focal length divided by a 5mm EP. So any adverts claiming x400 or x600 or professing huge improvements to magnifications of those levels with technical sounding things called Barlows are probably just to catch the uninformed and try to get them to part with their cash. About x200 or x250 with an 8" scope (less with a smaller scope) is sort of realistic in the UK due to our poor seeing conditions most of the time. Here is the thread:

As above - to attach a camera to a telescope the lens needs to come off. However, remember that you don't need a telescope to take nice interesting pictures of the sky. Any camera mounted on a tripod which has some control over appature and exposure can be used to take wide field images of the stars with each being exposed for a few seconds, you can then experiment with 'stacking' using freeware to see the effect. However, if you have to buy a camera, then get a full DSLR with a removeable lens.

I'm very cose to the 2nd n in London, if anyone else is close the sky here is cracking atm.

I didn't spend long outside - is damn parky here atm. but I did stop prevaricating and for the first time in ages and ages lugged the scope (200P) outside for a look up. I've just got back in and outside the sky here is superb - it's crystal clear - damn cold, but crystal clear. I've been wanting to look at Jupiter this year as it's supposed to be close - though I know I've missed closest by some large margin, but I still got a great view - very bright (brighter than I recall it), but two really clear lines across it under Morpheus 6.5mm. Saturn I couldn't see - too close to the horizon, but then I remembered seeing this post about Mars and easily found it. Again really bright, but I could actually see the 3 lobed dark shape indicated in the image above with the 6.5mm. Then for a bit of fun I wandered around pleiades with the 26mm plossl that I still use that came with the scope. I generally take it out, it's always made a pretty good 'finding' EP, after I've done red dot - optical then finally hit the object under the 26mm in the eyepiece. Then I came in as it's damn cold out. The views of Jupiter and Mars I think were as good as any I have had. I've never seen lines across Jupiter that clearly before, and as for actually seeing some detail in Mars well I've never seen that at all before. However, if I haven't already mentioned it it's damn cold out there!!!! NB. If you are wondering how I can make an on the spot decision to take the scope out, I keep it in our unheated porch and by this sort of hour it's very nearly outdoor temps in there, so the scope doesn't need to do much in the way of cooling down.

I guess its a case of little DONGs and big DONGs!

It's normally Saturn that you see the rings on 😉 Anyhow, it might be worth taking a gander at the pictures on the first page of this thread and realising that they were taken with a far more capable telescope than you have so it might be worth toning down your expectations accordingly.

I would recommend avoiding buying a telescope from Curry's, Amazon, National Geographic or any other multiproduct store. Buy the telescope from a bone-fide telescope supplier like the SGL sponser First Light Optics (FLO) and you will be much more likely to buy something that is fit for purpose rather than over-advertised with unachievable statistics designed to 'con' the more gullible among the population.

They don't need tripods they sit on tables or stools - nothing special, a picnic table would do. You sit them on a table, point them at the stars and off you go. Significantly easier than setting up a tripod. the vast majority of people in the know start of with small Dobsonian mounts like those.

You would probably find a Skywatcher heritage a better starting point. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/heritage.html Possibly a 100P or a 130P, look out for such things second-hand. If you could find a 200P secondhand you would be even better off, but you might find one secondhand.

I have shifted my 8" collapsable Dob by car. The OTA sits across the back seat with a seat belt around it. The base goes in the boot, but even in my big estate car I find it's too tall to stand on its base and have to lay it on its side in the boot.

I would take a look at the pictures on the first page of this thread and remember they are with a telescope of 8" diameter - far larger than yours - your view could make the planets even smaller. It is also worth bearing in mind that each EP will require a different focus.

I don't think I'm even aware that something called a helical focusser exists, but if it does and the photo shows it then the OP obviously doesn't have to worry about that side of things. Thanks for that pick-up 🙂

There is a nice graphic on telescope sizes in this thread

It looks a decent size - someone above mentioned 10". If the mirrors are OK I would think it's very saleable, esp. as it seems to have a solid mount with it. Looks like its missing the focussing unit that the EP fits into and drives it up and down to reach focus, but I imagine that is easily sourced.

Whilst it won't satisfy the 'want' for an actual telescope, many people on SGL get good views of the sky and of things like the moon, through a really good set of binoculars. However, my guess is she would be ecstatic with a Skywatcher 130P try to pick one up secondhand.

You'll be lucky. It will take you both hands to shift each piece IME. Dobsonian mounts are the very essence of unweildy even with handles on them! I've still got the two EP's that came with my Skywatcher. I still find them useful and quite useable esp. if I want to reset the telescope to basic setup to test something. I don't think they are exactly poor - when you are a beginner you probably won't even notice the difference optically.

You need this guide https://www.astro-baby.com/astrobaby/help/collimation-guide-newtonian-reflector/ which is the SGL favourite resource. You will note that perfectly collimated 200P (at the end of the article) still looks slightly off centre. However, I think even with the mirrors not ideal you should get something visible better than your pictures, unless of course the secondary has taken a bit of a bash. If you follow Astrobaby's guide to the letter (even including the odd sounding instructions about bits of paper etc. ) you will end up with a collimated scope (I did and there was no-one more worried about shifting stuff than me - give yourself plenty of time, if you know what you are doing it can be done in minutes - it took me over an hour the first time). What I did find was that you have to allow for the final tweaks of the nuts to finally position the mirrors and allow for that movement before you tighten them. However, although mine was a bit out, they have to be really out to get an image truly un-useable IMO. FWIW (even given that you've clearly had a fiddle) I doubt collimation is the issue unless your secondary is at an odd angle (the one below the EP). The guide is done with a 200P so is directly applicable to your own scope. What you need to know is that the lasers themselves can be off-centre and need collimation themselves and there are methods of introducing them into the focusser that make them more central than others. I bought and experimented with a laser - decided that the output was proverbially bad, bought a cheap Cheshire collimator (which Astrobaby uses) and never looked back, but even those need placing centrally between the focussing nuts to be err.... central!

Me too, one takes 2" EP's and one takes 1.25" ones. I suspect the OP just needs the smaller one directly in the focuser (the one on the right hand side in their picture) and then a 1.25" EP on top. Since we have determined that the locking nut is not the issue, i.e. when the focus knobs are turned the focussing turret goes up and down then I think more enthusiastic turning of the focus knobs might be needed. I would suggest that the OP sets up the telescope during the daytime (please point it away from the sun though) and then find a distant tree or aerial to experiment with - it will be upside down and back to front in the EP, but this doesn't matter) Watching the image through a 1.25 EP fitted into the JUST the 1.25" turret mounted into the focuser drive the focus wheels from one end of travel to the other when I would be very surprised if you can't achieve a perfectly focussed image at some point - if you can't then come back and tell us. The only possible hiccup being if the OP actually has a flex tube Skywatcher like the one in your photo @Mr Spock (or like the one I own) where the OP might not have realised that there are two clicks needed to unlock the flex tubes to the longest extent and that both clicks are needed - focus won't be achieved unless the tube is drawn out to double click position and locked in place with the small twisty locking nuts.

After taking advice on SGL I purchased an 8" Skywatcher 200P with a 1200mm focal length. I have been very happy with what I see through it and can just about move it around unassisted, Mine is a folding version with telescopic bars to extend it and it takes up about the space of a dining chair in its folded form on its stand. NB. stairs greatly complicate the movement of large telescopes.

Ditto above. Post what you intend to buy on here first and get some good advice, that way you won't have expectations raised only to crash and burn and waste your cash. Also, look here: before you buy anything at all - even if you just look at the pictures on the first page. I own a reflecting telescope with a mirror that is 8" (approx. 20cm) wide and a focal length of about 1.2m - bought after taking advice on SGL, that's probably way more capable than what you are currently looking at. On a good night I can see the sorts of images that are in the tiny planet pictures in that thread and about x200 to x240 is about the maximum that is useable for me to get those views. In the UK you won't get much joy going much closer IME. Thus, it seems unlikely that the telescope you are looking at is fit for purpose given it's optimistic descriptions.