First light - Skywatcher 200P Dob

[WakeyTiger]

At last! A reasonably clear night to give my new baby a run out...

Left scope outside for 30 mins to acclimatise, and then started off with Arcturus. Not much else was standing out tonight, and with my EP's there probably wasn;t much chance of any planetary action, but I nevertheless tried to navigate my way from Arcturus to Saturn - and failed.

Alot of haze still in the early part of the night to contend with, and probably some LP caused by the extremely bright lighting on our development.

Tracking with the Dob is challenging, but got some practice with Arcturus and Spica.

Could only view Southern and Eastern skies due to houses - so no moon for me tonight...

Well worth the wait though, just can't wait for some colder weather now! (that sounds SO wrong...)

Still not fitted my Telrad yet, that's my next job I think...

[david o]

Congrats on fist light

Hope you bag Saturn soon, download Stellarium (if you haven't already) to help you find him. About 30º, 3' to the SSW of Arcturus

[DOBBY]

Congrats on 1st light...

I can sympathise with you on the LP...but...you'll get there...I had a peak through the wife's 200SW the other night & was well impressed with her view of saturn.

My scope is due to arrive today (dob) so...please let me know how you get on with the 'Telrad' as i think i may need one

[cotterless45]

Get Telrad! Find loads easily

Telrad Finder Charts | Hot Astronomy

Get on the Dob Users group, Yo, go for it!

[Slim]

Grats on the first light! Grab Stellarium as others have said and you'll have Saturn in view in no time at all. The ISS will be wizzing past Saturn over the coming nights as well.

[davehunt]

Saturn was the first view I got with my 200p Dob,which arrived a couple of days ago- beware,Saturn is addictive!My az is a bit sticky,but am working on mods.Great scope though,n'est ce pas?

[WakeyTiger]

many thanks for all the tips here folks! really appreciated. Yeah, it's a great scope - looking forward to seeing more.

From what I read, my EP's should be sufficient for Saturn (I have a 10mm, 25mm and a x2 Barlow - focal length 1200mm) - so I'll keep trying in better skies soon, once this weather turns - hehe.

Not been out tonight, long bike ride wore me out

[ZEbbEDY]

ive got the stock eyepieces and could see it no bother in the 25mm and then switched over to the 10 for more detail also saw titan with the 10 not bad considering the seeing but ive got dark skys up here

makes me want to get some posher ep's and a barlow too (dont mind the standard spotter scope

[Dil]

I took my Skywatcher 250 for its first real outing tonight. (We had a quick play the other night by the house.) My daughter (18) was so excited when she saw Alcor and Mizar in Ursa Major! I'm still a novice when it comes to star hopping and am already seriously considering getting a Telrad for it.

Hoping for more clear nights before I have to go back to work ...

[twotter]

A Telrad will help, especially if you use the charts which have the circles printed on them for you to refer to. I prefer a simple red dot finder and use Stellarium to work out my star hopping. I've also got Turn Left at Orion, and one habit I've noticed is that I tend to 'zoom in' too much when looking for targets and can miss the 'bigger picture'. An example of this is when I went looking for M13, and I couldn't find it at all. Turned out to be that I the 'keystone' I was looking for was a lot bigger than what I was mentally looking for.

If that makes sense???