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helios telescope d=114mm f=900mm

Selina

By Selina
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Selina

Selina

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Hi, can someone please give me some advise of the above telescope.

This is my first telescope and im very excited to get started :).

However i really dont know much about them lol!

I have found this telescope of good old ebay but the owner hasnt used it so doesnt know much about it.

He said it is a helios eq2 reflecror telescope, d=114mm f=900mm and comes with two eye pieces.

I want to look at planets and moons in colour - is this a good telescope?

Any help would be great - attached is a picture.

thanks, Selina

post-34576-133877746168_thumb.jpg

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RikM

RikM

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Hi Selina, welcome to SGL.

If you are manly interested in looking at the moon, this scope should be fine. For the planets it is also better than some scopes you could have picked, the focal ratio is almost f/8 so nice and long which means you will get quite high magnification and cheaper eyepieces will work okay. That said, it is quite a small scope so you won't get huge colourful views of the planets. You should be able to see the rings of Saturn and the main cloud belts and moon of Jupiter. Mars will probably be a small orange disc rather than just a point of light, but you probably won't see much detail.

The EQ2 mount is a bit light weight for a long tube like that though, so you might find it shakes about quite a bit. It'll do to get you going though.

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Selina

Selina

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thank you so much for this Rik. I have roughly £90 for my first telescope, is there anything else you would recommend or do you think i should go for this one?

Selina

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RikM

RikM

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Honestly, if it were me (and it was once :) ) I would save up a bit more and get something a bit larger and easier to use.

First Light Optics - Skywatcher Skyliner 150P Dobsonian

While I know this is a lot more money, it will be much easier to learn and to use and the views will be much better.

There is a cheaper Heritage 130P, which is also a great scope, but is a much shorter focal length so probably not so good for lunar / planetary viewing.

Probably not what you wanted to hear, and please don't just take my word for it. See what others have to say first.

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I have a similar (albeit Jessops) scope. I was disappointed with the views it gave and I'm now considering moving up to something large. But what I am really impressed with are the view you can get from a reasonable pair of binoculars. So if I were starting out again, I'd use binoculars to see the sites and find my way around the sky and then decide what it is you're interested in and buy a scope to suit that purpose.

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JamesM

JamesM

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Hi Selina and welcome to the forum. Totally agree with Rik's comments on saving a little extra (..if you can) to get a lot more aperture. Aperture equals resolution and by that we mean more detail. Think of light as a telephone line, the more lines you have the more information you can access and play with. The downside is of course that scopes that are too big can very quickly become a little bit unwieldy and difficult to store and transport. The main problem with the scope you have pictured is not so much the scope itself but the tripod (mount) it sits on - too twitchy! Whether you are focusing or moving the scope to track an object, it will be bouncing around for ages. The dobsonian is a bit more sturdy and will offer a more consistent eye position to look through as opposed to an equatorially mounted scope which can often place the eyepiece in awkward position to look through. The suggestion of using other 'used' sights is a way of bagging a bargain BUT you have to know what you are looking at to spot any problems.

Glad you could join us and keep us informed on how you are doing.

Clear skies

James

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Selina

Selina

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Thank you so much everyone, I will def take the comments on board and will not go for the scope i have seen and will keep looking. I will let you all know how i am getting on :) thanks again

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haitch

haitch

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Due to rebranding Helios is essentially the same scope as the Skywatcher 114 (without the P) whilst Skywatcher have a good reputation this was not one of their better scopes.

It uses a spherical mirror which isn't necessarily a problem if it has a very slow focal ratio but they now do a version with a P on the end of the name that has a parabolic mirror.

The next step up is Skywatchers 130p which, if planets and the moon are your main targets, would be a good little scope but bear in mind people with those do soon get a hankering for more aperture as it is quite limiting on galaxies and nebulas.

If your budget is very limited consider as dobsonian base as it allows you to spend a greater proportion of your budget on the optics.

Edit: just been looking round and it looks like they dicontinued this straight away when they became skywatcher - Looking again it's much longer than their current spherical mirrored 4". Might not be too bad but I'm not sure f8 is short enough to get away with a spherical mirror.

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