SkyMax 150: First Light

[catburglar]

I umm'd and ahh'd for a few months about this realised I'd missed the best of Mars for this year, but Saturn is coming up, so eventually went and ordered from FLO on Friday lunchtime.

Scope arrived last night, so today's job was to get it on the mount (AZ4) and get the finder aligned and a camping mat dew shield knocked up.

The finder is the usual SW straight through type, focused by turning the objective lens cell, and adjusted with two screws acting at 90 degrees to a spring loaded pivot. Alignment was done in a flash, only problem is that the scope on the mount puts the finder at lower left, so finding things at decent altitude requires a bit of contortion. Might need a right angle finder, or a telrad.

Put the scope out this evening at about 7, and sky was sufficiently dark by 8:30 to give it a first light.

First target was Venus- quick tweak and the finder is bang on. Venus is an obvious crescent in the supplied 28mm LER eyepiece. Nice and comfortable to use, and pretty flat field.

Next up Mars-the main event of the evening. Centred it in the 28mm, the dropped in a 7mm Nirvana for around 250x. The seeing was reasonable, and the north polar cap, with a dark collar and Syrtis Major just coming into view.

Critical focus was slightly challenging at this magnification, although there was only a tiny amount of image shift. Tried a few colour filters, which certainly upped the contrast of the markings, but didn't make a significant difference unlike in my ZS80, where everything but the NPC are really marginal without a filter on most nights.

Finally, by about 10pm Gamma Leonis is at a good altitude, and the atmosphere is reasonably steady, so thought I'd do a star test. Still had the 7 mm eyepiece in, and both components were easily split. Two diffraction rings around each component, almost perfectly concentric and very similar intra and extra focal appearance.

In summary, this is typical Of Sky Watcher current products. Good to very good optics, decent build and really good value.

For me, it's almost perfect for it's intended use. Collimation is so close that I'm reluctant to tweak it. Mars was as sharp as I've seen in a 10 inch dob, and the scope takes a minute to set up on the AZ 4. When not touching the focus knob, the scope is solid, up to 250x, and fairly easy to track at this magnification.

Might consider a finder swap or tube rings in the near future, and a motor focusser so it's a bit easier to get the focus spot on, and a new moon atlas so I can get to know our nearest neighbour a bit better.

[Mark at Beaufort]

Very nice report Catburglar it certainly shows the quality of these Mak.Cass scopes from Skywatcher.

For some time I have been considering buying either the 150 or the 180 I really must be positive and make a decision.

Mark

[shellfish]

oooo sounds like you had a good night.... fingers crossed for many more :)

[wrinkly]

Good write up, makes me think my 90 is too small.

However, as it's a rapidly approaching three quarters of a century birthday this month and only the OAP as finance, leads me to wonder how many cats you had to burgle and the best way to do it?