Hi,
I'm matt from the UK, essex to be more accurate. I had a skywatcher 150p around 8 years ago and had some amazing moments with it, Jupiter being one of the highlights despite the 150p's declination towards DSO's. Unfortunately due to some financial problems at the time I had to sell it. Astronomy was a hobby I locked away to a quiet corner of my brain until my very wise other half helped me realise how much I missed it.
We have just bought a skywatcher 150pds as i want to focus on astrophotography this time. Its currently on a eq3 pro mount with synscan. Not the ideal mount, i plan to upgrade to the heq5 as soon as possible, but its perfect for me to learn and practise on.
We bought the scope and mount second hand in an amazing deal, coming with the coma corrector, all 3 sky panorama uwa lenses, the canon t ring adaptors and a clubman flight case for £700. Everything in perfect condition, although the mount has some stickiness and i think maybe some binding in the gears, so I plan to strip it down, de and regrease and reassemble as soon as possible.
Have only had the opportunity for a couple of hours viewing so far, during which I very unsuccessfully attempted to polar align and then 2 star align the mount, but loved seeing it slew. I did get some amazing manual visual observation on the moon, but was surprised that despite my previous experience with a very similar scope just how much I don't know. Am very eager to learn as much as I can and am very excited to be back in the hobby, as you can probably tell from my extracted and probably boring welcome message.
Anyone with any experience of this scope or mount with any tips or little known tweaks I would be exceptionally grateful for any advice. Or any tips in regards to polar aligning and star aligning, especially in a class 6 bortle or similar.
One problem I struggled with was gaining any focus on any lens I have while using the barlow lens. Am sure it is either my error or cheap equipment but I gained a very nice focus with the 28mm supplied lens and the panorama range but struggled gaining focus with the barlow and said lenses. After looking into this though I'm wondering if it was due to me not accounting for eye relief?
I look forward to meeting like minded people on this forum.
Many regards
Matt