....to the gorblimey: first light on the Skywatcher Mercury 705

[Whippy]

What does £100 get you these days? A nice meal for you and your other half? A Nintendo DS? What about 400 cigarettes? Or perhaps a complete telescope setup? Interested? Read on...

After spending plenty of money on a 'posh' refractor, I wanted to get an Alt/Az mount for some grab & go action. I couldn't spend loads of money on one because I spent all of it on the scope! So there was only one real option and that was to get an AZ3, £80 is pretty reasonable BUT for an extra £20 you could also get a 70mm refractor, a diagonal and a couple of eyepieces. My thinking was 'well, if it works, great and I could use it as a guide scope and/or something for the kids to use as it won't matter if they break it'. After throwing down some cash at FLO, the boxes duly arrived and opened it up...

First impressions? Well, after the usual synta 'package everything' boxmania (Should point out that this is a good thing! Don't want anything broken), is it looks like a 'proper' scope. 70mm of aperture and a focal length of 500mm so your focal length is f7.14. Your usual Synta R&P focuser, mount for the RDF, a 10mm eyepiece, a 25mm 'super wide' eyepiece, one 45 degree self erecting prism and tube rings for mounting. The tube itself is metal, as is the chrome focuser tube and everything else is plastic on the OTA. Pulled off the dewshield and the lenses look coated but the coloured refection I'm used to seeing isn't as prominent so I'm guessing they're not 'fully' coated. Hang on, what's this? You can unscrew the lens cell. Ah, the lenses aren't fixed in place. Issue number one, if you're letting your children use this, then you might want to glue the lens cell screw in as the lenses themselves aren't fixed in and they could fall out really easily. Other than that, I'm quite impressed to be honest.

Last night was the first clear night in what seemed like eons great, but there's one small problem. Wife, kids and Mother-in-law are leaving early to get off to the Highlands of Scotland for a week while I supervise a load of builders doing some work on our house so time is a bit of luxury here. I'll cheat a bit here and mount it on my CG5 just for tonight and I'll be able to hit a few more objects than I would if I was using the AZ3. The Moon was out but as it's low down, my house is covering it, conditions aren't great either but it'll have to do....

All aligned and a nice easy target first, Albeiro. Hm, it's visible with the standard prism and EP's. Let's try a mirror diagonal and some better eyepieces. That's better! The colours look right to me, sharp points of light. Got the magnification up to x100 with a 5mm TMB/BO planetary EP and it held it well, not bad!! There's a bit of image shift in the focuser but you can't complain at this price.

Let's try another one, open cluster? M29 will do, yep it's there alright. The stars don't leap out at you as they would in a more expensive scope but they're there and there's no real bad abberations in the view to my eyes.

M31? The CG5 duly obliges and again, it's there. The background isn't black possibly due to the conditions and the coatings (or lack of) on the lenses but it works and for £20, I'm impressed.

Let's push our luck a bit a try for M81....Not visible. That's not to say I wouldn't be able to see it on a good night, but not tonight. A quick spin to Cor. Caroli which was easily split and time to pack up. Everything is coated in dew anyway so a withdrawal and an early night is in order.

Well apart from the lens cell issue, frankly I'm amazed you're able to get a complete setup on a half decent mount for £100. Yes the prism and eyepieces are rubbish but what do you expect? When you buy a new hi-fi separate and you get those phono leads which get the unit working, but you replace them with better ones to get better sound don't you? You don't? Well you should, it'll make a huge difference in quality, trust me . The RDF is flimsy plastic, but again it works and does it's job one thing is that it doesn't use the standard Synta shoe/foot mount, it screws straight onto the OTA so a replacement one might not be as easy as you think there. So apart from these minor niggles, it'd be a great first scope for someone or as a budget grab & go because as the mount can take far more than this scope, you always upgrade the OTA to something better if or when you fancy. The AZ3 takes my William Optics ZS110 fairly easily so there's a fair choice out there if or when your budget allows.

I'll be bringing this to Kelling as part of the beginners scope group test that Kai Herb is organising, and I'm hoping that more discerning observers are as impressed with it as I am.

Right, I've been up since 3.40 after far too little sleep and I've got to clear out the rest of the kitchen and extension so they can be 're-modelled' as the Americans would say. I saw Orion in the sky earlier when I was putting the kids in the car which I felt was most unnatural in the middle of Summer!

Clear skies all .

Tony..

[Kai]

Nice report Tony 8)

Hopefully the Scope test will throw up some more gems.

The only thing is that i cant help but think Mercury 705 is a local radio station

"Welcome to Mercury 705 where the hits keep on rolling"

[Whippy]

Ta mate . I'm actually looking forward to doing the test because as you say, it should throw up at least a couple of gems (TAL1TAL1TAL1TAL1TAL1).....

'Mercury 705 on your AM Radio dial! And now it's Procul Harem with A Whiter Shade of Pale...'

Tony..

[Macavity]

A heartening review. It underlines the idea that (IMO) telescopes don't become "useless" below a certain aperture/price. I do think this was one of the (ahem) less positive ideas floating around in the "days of yore". I feel this may have prevented many a potential, financially-challenged astronomer (me, back then!) "having a go"?

Resisting the full-blown "Yorkshireman Sketch" here.

[jonifive]

I always felt a bit "poor" when I first started. My wife brought me a 60mm tasco frac on a dodgy wooden tripod years ago, and to be honest I always felt a bit of a fraud using it. But the first view I had of Saturn just blew me away, and I soon upgraded to a Helios 114 which served well for years.

That first poor scope did its job and helped me on my way. These days we are really lucky that small cheap scopes are usually very good and are great at grab and go.

Good review Tony....heres to the inexpensive skywatcher.

JV