Do you recommend a Skywatcher 200P?

[RichieG]

Hello everyone, my name is Rich and for my first post I'd like your opinions on the Skywatcher 200P for deep space viewing please. I've currently got a Meade DS2080AT-LNT AZ Refractor scope and whilst it has served me well for looking at near objects like the moon I'm after something a lot more powerful for better viewing of the planets and Galaxies and such. My budget is well below the grand mark so would like your views if you'd be so kind. Also my back garden where I will mostly be viewing in the East to South direction has an annoying street lamp shining into it from the South side so aside from putting it out of action, (I still have a catapult lying about somewhere), does anybody have any information on blocking that light out? Thank you for reading and I look forward to typing to you all soon.

[Steve 1962]

The Skywatcher 200p is a cracking scope - I was very pleased with mine - I only sold it because personally I don't like the diffraction spikes on stars in images taken with a Newtonian scope - but if you're only going to be using it visually that's no problem. What sort of mount are you thinking of?- The cheapest is probably a Dob mounted 200p, the minimum equatorial mount for visual seems to be an EQ5, while the minimum for imaging is an HEQ5 Pro or ideally an EQ6.

Re the streetlight - speak to your council and ask if they can install a shield.

Hope this helps

Steve

[MBJ]

i have a 200p on an eq5 mount and its a great scope both for visual and imaging although its not guided i have had some very good images and a lot of excellent viewing.

[rowan46]

I think it's universally agreed that the skyliner 200p dob is in a class of it's own no other new telescope gives better views for less money as long as you don't need a highly portable scope it's the best scope under £300 by a mile. sorry I misread your post I thought you typed skyliner. I am not sure it's the best scope for imaging as it needs quite a beefy mount but visually in any of its incarnations its a cracking piece of kit

[Tiddles]

The 200 Dob is (IMO) as portable as a 200P on EQ5 and a lot quicker to set up.

[jimmyjamjoejoe]

I love my 200p.

If you're sure you're interest is solely visual, you can't beat a dob. They're rock steady and cheapcheap. Most people find the 200p is the sweet spot, showing you great views whilst being generally transportable. I personally wouldn't go bigger since it wouldn't fit in the car, and i couldn't afford a flextube.

My advice - take your budget, and take £150 off of it for eyepieces and general mods/addons. With the remaining cash get yourself the biggest scope you can practically fit in your life. Spend a month or two using the scope with no mods/addons, and get a feel for what would be handy, what you'l need etc.

[RichieG]

What sort of mount are you thinking of?- The cheapest is probably a Dob mounted 200p, the minimum equatorial mount for visual seems to be an EQ5, while the minimum for imaging is an HEQ5 Pro or ideally an EQ6.

Re the streetlight - speak to your council and ask if they can install a shield.

Thanks Steve, I was initially keen to get the 200P Dob or even the 250 but then thought about portability so was edging towards the EQ5 mount if the HEQ5 is out of budget. I don't need a Synscan or GoTo at this stage because I want to learn to manually search with a little help from my StarWalk iPhone app.

I'll ring South Glos council Re: the shield thanks.

i have a 200p on an eq5 mount and its a great scope both for visual and imaging although its not guided i have had some very good images and a lot of excellent viewing.

Thants what I think is more in my budget

I think it's universally agreed that the skyliner 200p dob is in a class of it's own no other new telescope gives better views for less money as long as you don't need a highly portable scope it's the best scope under £300 by a mile. sorry I misread your post I thought you typed skyliner. I am not sure it's the best scope for imaging as it needs quite a beefy mount but visually in any of its incarnations its a cracking piece of kit

I will probably want to do imaging at a later stage.

The 200 Dob is (IMO) as portable as a 200P on EQ5 and a lot quicker to set up.

I could handle it too I think, thanks Tiddles.

I love my 200p.

If you're sure you're interest is solely visual, you can't beat a dob. They're rock steady and cheapcheap. Most people find the 200p is the sweet spot, showing you great views whilst being generally transportable. I personally wouldn't go bigger since it wouldn't fit in the car, and i couldn't afford a flextube.

My advice - take your budget, and take £150 off of it for eyepieces and general mods/addons. With the remaining cash get yourself the biggest scope you can practically fit in your life. Spend a month or two using the scope with no mods/addons, and get a feel for what would be handy, what you'l need etc.

I was also looking at the Flextube but couldn't justify the extra £s for the sake of size. Thanks for the advice on the eyepieces, I know I will need something in the region of a 2mm to see Galaxies with much detail.

Thank you all for your quick replies and just another question, when you see the planets and DSOs, can you make out the colours or can you just see the bright white light? Probably a silly question but still.

[Tiddles]

A 200P has a focal length of 1000mm, with a 2mm EP that will give you x500. Most you can reasonably expect to use regularly would be x200. A 6mm or 12mm with a Barlow would be about right. You will see colour in Mars, Saturn and Jupiter. All DSO's will appear as faint grey smudges.

[Caelus]

A 200P has a focal length of 1000mm, with a 2mm EP that will give you x500. Most you can reasonably expect to use regularly would be x200. A 6mm or 12mm with a Barlow would be about right. You will see colour in Mars, Saturn and Jupiter. All DSO's will appear as faint grey smudges.

My 200P Dob has a sticker on the side saying that the focal length is 1200mm. It comes with 10 and 25mm EPs, giving x120 and x48 magnifications respectively. I tried my x2 Barlow on the 10mm EP and it seemed to be a bit too much magnification to get a clear, bright image. A 6mm EP would put you right on that x200 mark and probably be quite a nice, reasonable maximum.

[jimmyjamjoejoe]

The dons are 1200mm, the explorers are 1000mm.

Although 200x is often quoted as the max it is quite often less than that in reality. Most people find 8mm in the dob to be best most nights.

As for galaxies - dont expect much more than a smudge. You can sometimes JUST make out some detail on a good night, from a dark site, with dark adapted eyes etc. also, magnifying things makes them dimmer, so galaxies are best with low power.

The 10mm that comes with the scope is terrible. Most say it is just about acceptable, but it really isnt. Its terrible.

[RichieG]

How does everyone get these amazing photographs of DSOs in the images pages then? Is it with the zoom of the imaging equipment that they use?

[swamp thing]

Hi

8" scope= great scope. If you want a portable set up ignore the EQ mounts. IMO they're a PITA for visual, with the eyepieces constantly ending up in ridiculously awkward positions.

The constant rotating of the tube in order to view objects is very annoying. And the set up time is tedious.

If you wish to do AP unfortunately you have to have one though.

But for purely visual the Dob is a country mile better.

If it was me I think I would buy the Dob then get an EQ for the times I wished to image.

Regards Steve

[johnny diamond]

hi ritchie,

i would deffo reccomend the 200p,and i am a fan of the dobby mount,i have however purchased an eq5 mount also,and at present trying to work out a way of being able to use it on both mounts easily without having to remove tube ring's or dobby mount point's to achive this,but heyhoo we'll get there

[Tiddles]

How does everyone get these amazing photographs of DSOs in the images pages then? Is it with the zoom of the imaging equipment that they use?

Have a look through the stickies in the imaging forum.

It is usual to have x2 'scopes and x2 cameras, one to image, one to guide. Laptops, expensive mounts, various software packages and modified DSLR camera or specialised CCD cameras costing thousands of pounds.

The process of "taking" a picture is more often referred to as collecting data, the data is then assembled in yet more software to create the final image. One of the recent images shows a total open shutter time of 31 hours:eek:

Many of these objects are actually quite large so magnification isn't often the most important. They are however incredibly faint and collecting enough photons to make an image is tricky. For example the Horse head nebula is a dark dust cloud silhouetted against a very very faint area of Ha emission.

[Orion_the_Hunter]

I love my 200p Dob.

http://stargazerslounge.com/member-equipment-reviews/132996-skywatcher-skyliner-200p-8-dob.html

[RichieG]

hi ritchie,

i would deffo reccomend the 200p,and i am a fan of the dobby mount,i have however purchased an eq5 mount also,and at present trying to work out a way of being able to use it on both mounts easily without having to remove tube ring's or dobby mount point's to achive this,but heyhoo we'll get there

Hi johnny, I think I will do the same eventually. Wouldn't the tube be too heavy to go onto the EQ mount though? Good luck.

Have a look through the stickies in the imaging forum.

It is usual to have x2 'scopes and x2 cameras, one to image, one to guide. Laptops, expensive mounts, various software packages and modified DSLR camera or specialised CCD cameras costing thousands of pounds.

The process of "taking" a picture is more often referred to as collecting data, the data is then assembled in yet more software to create the final image. One of the recent images shows a total open shutter time of 31 hours:eek:

Many of these objects are actually quite large so magnification isn't often the most important. They are however incredibly faint and collecting enough photons to make an image is tricky. For example the Horse head nebula is a dark dust cloud silhouetted against a very very faint area of Ha emission.

Yes I thought that, I just initially want to see these things with my own eyes first. I might even be able to stretch to a 250PX dob or even the FlexTube one. I'd like the 300 but after seeing the size of one next to the 200 in Damo636 post http://stargazerslounge.com/discussions-scopes-whole-setups/171724-when-8-became-my-grab-n-go.html it might be a bit too large. I think when I show Mrs RichieG the planets through the 250 she might forget about the size of the scope. She was amazed at the moon and seeing the gaps between Saturn and its rings using my Meade last year. As was I.

[jimmyjamjoejoe]

How does everyone get these amazing photographs of DSOs in the images pages then? Is it with the zoom of the imaging equipment that they use?

It isn't down to magnification, it's down to long exposures. For example, the andromeda galaxy extends the width of several full moons, it is just incredibly faint, your eyes aren't wide enough to let enough light in, so we use scopes to gather large areas of light, and focus it into an area that our eyes can absorb.

The imagers will use long exposures, say 5 minutes per exposure, and take LOTS of them, and afterwards they stack all the images ontop of one another, add in some post processing etc...

Point is, you'l never see things the way the images appear unfortunately.

[jimmyjamjoejoe]

If you want a rough idea of what to expect, take a look here.

That guy has pretty dark skies, but his representations of Orion and andromeda etc are pretty much spot on compared to what i see from my dark site.

[RichieG]

Ok, thanks for all your replies. I have nearly decided to go for the 200P or 200PDS with either an EQ5 Synscan mount or the HEQ5 mount. Is there a lot of difference between, a) the scopes and the mounts? I will want to be doing AP in the future but for now, observing.

[Black Knight]

For visual observing only a 200P on an EQ5 would be fine.

If you are definitely thinking of going into AP, then out of those two scopes the 200PDS is the better option. It has a dual speed focuser with a fine focus knob that the 200P doesn't have, and the "secondary mirror positioned closer to the primary mirror for more convenient prime-focus photography". (From FLO's website http://www.firstlightoptics.com/reflectors/skywatcher-explorer-200p-ds-ota.html).

As far as mounts go, the general rule when imaging is to not load the mount more than 50% of its capacity. With either of those scopes, the EQ5 is at its load carrying limit. So for AP the minimum you would need would be an HEQ5 Synscan mount, in fact some would even go as far as to suggest an NEQ6. The HEQ5 has more load capacity than the EQ5, meaning you could add a guidescope and cameras etc. AP with a 200P or 200PDS on an HEQ5 can be done, many have done it, you just have to balance it very carefully. The HEQ5 also has better motors and gears than the EQ5.

Another mount that may be worth considering would be the now-discontinued HEQ5 Syntrek, although you would have to be looking to pick one up second hand. The Syntrek is an HEQ5 with the same motors etc as the Synscan model but without the Synscan GOTO handset. This would be ideal if you wanted to connect the mount to a computer-based planetarium such as Stellarium or CdC perhaps using EQMod, to provide your GOTO needs instead of the GOTO handset. It might be worth considering if you are planning to use a computer anyway to help manage your imaging in the future.

Of course, by the same reasoning, you could also get a brand new EQ6 Syntrek and save on the expense of the GOTO handset for around £60 more than the HEQ5 Pro Synscan model .... .

[stevetynant]

If you want a rough idea of what to expect, take a look here.

That guy has pretty dark skies, but his representations of Orion and andromeda etc are pretty much spot on compared to what i see from my dark site.

There are some great sketches there - thanks for sharing wth us

[en51nm]

The Skywatcher 200p is a cracking scope - I was very pleased with mine

Couldn't agree more, I'm very happy with my 200P, it's a fantastic scope.

[paul schofield]

I am yet to hear of someone that has not been impressed with the 200p. Great scope great aperture, easy and a joy to use.

[Zaphod360]

I have a 200p on a eq5 and it provides amazing views, however... If I could buy again I would have got a dob. I would have a long think about what you intend to use it for, personally I think astrophotography is pushing it on this setup (some very talented people have accomplished this so it's not impossible) but I get a bigger buz from observing. Messing around spinning the tube and rebalancing quickly gets annoying. I now try to stick to one constellation so I don't have to mess about too much. My recommendation would be to go to a astro store that's got some dobs in stock so you can get a real feel for the size and get the biggest you can afford, carry, store. I would consider getting an auto/tracking one if you can afford it and as a bare minimum for accessories get a Telrad!!!! Best thing a beginner can buy. Also the skysafari app is very good and can display Telrad circles. Clear dark skies.

[SHUTTLE ATLANTIS]

i also have a 200p dob its great so pleased i got it , i read many things about it on here before going for it.