Beginner' scope and books, which of these?

[Jenky69]

Anyone used a skywatcher sky hawk 1145p?? Any advice as per early question re first scope.

[BinocularSky]

Anyone used a skywatcher sky hawk 1145p?? Any advice as per early question re first scope.

I had a peep through one years ago, when it first came out. Slightly under-mounted for my liking (but then, most stuff is); wrote at the time that it was the best value for money in a scope for under £150. I don't know what it costs now.

[McAldo]

For Oculars in Stellerium, click the 'spanner' icon at the top right of page & that'l bring ur ocular options and yes a 10mm used with 2x Barlow will be 5mm (25mm Barlowed =12.5mm etc) Enjoy ur scope.

Thanks, in reality I did find the option you mention, but I am a bit confused with the AFOV value, I don't find the info anywhere.

Do all oculars of the same focal lenght have the same afov?

[GaryM]

I just got Turn Left at Orion for xmas from my son and inbetween the festivities today I have taken a peek or two and it looks great.

[BinocularSky]

Do all oculars of the same focal lenght have the same afov?

No. If it's not given, you can approximate it as follows for budget 1.25" eyepieces:

30* for Huyghenian (H)

40* for Kellners and Modified Achromats (K, MA)

50* for Plossls (except 40mm, which is 40*)

[Special K]

The only use I got out of my Skywatcher stock 10mm was to remove the aluminium sleeve & use it as a way of attatching my webcam 2 my focuser.

Thanks for that idea..........filed for future reference!!!

[nephilim]

Thanks, in reality I did find the option you mention, but I am a bit confused with the AFOV value, I don't find the info anywhere.

Do all oculars of the same focal lenght have the same afov?

In the actual scope I find this quite helpful http://www.csgnetwork.com/telefov.html when I first started and I saw fov 50deg on an EP I naively assumed thats what you'd get thru the scope where as its closer to 0.5-1deg, very confusing, so 'apparent' fov is very different to the 'actual' fov, as if this hobby isnt complicated enough haha.

[McAldo]

So, thanks again for all the advice.

I have just spent most of my free time over the last two days trying to spot things through the dense clouds, reading up and of course learning the names of stars and constellations.

It's been a while since I was so excited about something

Now, due to gifts crossfire, we have not one but two scopes.

One bird watching scope, Auriol, 20-60X60, a 25 quid from LIDL, no detachable eyepiece that I can see (not willign to pull hard to find out .

And a Dobsonian 76mm, branded SEBEN. As I mentioned, it comes with erector 1.5X, multiplier 2X, and 4 eyepieces, H20mm, H10mm, RC6mm and H4mm.

I understand they are just the type of optics expert astronomers won't touch with a barge pole, but, hey, it's a start

When I first saw my dobsonian I thought it was the same as the heritage 76, quality wise and externally, but for the fact the SEBEN is higher on the mount, so less compact.

Then I read up a bit and realized many find SEBEN scopes inferior, in the bliss of my ignorance and not having ever tried other scopes I am unsure whether the difference might be massive enough for me to appreciate.

So, on the night of the 26th we went to the garden around 6pm (we have a little kid so we have to fit in with his schedule).

Armed with the knowledge from stellarium that the full moon would be there, along with a few other things bright and close enough to the moon for complete noobs to find. Jupiter, Aldebaran and a small cluster including Alcyon and Atlas, which looked so pretty on stellarium but I couldn't quite locate in "second left to Orion" but surely looked pretty in stellarium.

I am ashamed to say that, well into my three days of passion, I can now say that this little and mysterious cluster, which we never caught a glimpse of due to the clouds, is indeed mentioned in SLTO. It's not too mysterious though, it's the Pleiades

But moon, Jupiter and aldebaran where obviously easy to track, so we had a very good time. And was so amazed the birding scope was actually able to show what, I think , was Cappella and the Auriga where only clouds showed at my naked eye (I know, first time with a scope )

Moon glare was indeed a bit strong, so I'll probably get an ND, along with a nebula filter for when the clouds will finally [removed word] off.

The birding scope is sharp at 20X, ok at 30X and bad enough at 60X to make out more detail at lower enlargements. Focusing requires quite a lot of fiddling and tracking things on my camera tripod was a jerky affair for sure.

Eye relief is null. I wear glasses and in the end I resorted taking them off, despite being heavily short-sighted. Nice views still.

The dobsonian is much more stable, of course. Still, the mount is a bit jerky for fine adjustments. I wonder if the heritage is any better in that respect.

No viewfinder scope, which is definitely a problem. After some practise I can find the moon relatively fast, but smaller targets are really tricky.

The optics are all you all said they were, I suspect

20mm is definitely the sharpest, 10mm not so much, 6mm and 4mm really difficult to focus and not sharp, I can make out more of the moon geography with the 10mm.

Still undecided whether the 20mm on barlow 2X is better than the 10mm.

4mm on barlow gave me a very soft, fluttering image. But I understand that it could be that the ocular was too warm still, so perhaps not a fault of the optics, not completely.

Both scopes showed lots of chromatic aberration on the brightest side of the moon at high magnifications.

Eye relief was really poor with both scopes, I observed with my glasses off most of the time.

So, now I am thinking I should get:

1) At least one quality ocular, 20mm probably. Zoom ones seem very enticing, as I saw some claiming very large FOV and hopefully good eye relief. Just, they are 2", so when mounted with an adapter they won't perform that great on a 1,25", still have to understand how that works.

2) One ND or red filter, and one nebula filter

3) a laser pointer or some other pointing device, and finding a way to attach it to my dobsonian (no finder mount provided) stably enough to adjust it. Given the mount is far from smooth for fine adjustments, I think a finder will save me lots of swearing and time better spent gazing.

But even with what I have, I think I'll have lots of fun. I am slowly memorizing the basic landmarks and making my own mnemonics (SiRiA CaPo Pro, hemm, you know, the stuff around Orion and Betelgeuse , so when the clouds finally lift I should be able to find my way around.

One reason to be happy I often work night shifts

Sorry for the long, boring post and thanks again for all the advice

[McAldo]

No. If it's not given, you can approximate it as follows for budget 1.25" eyepieces:

30* for Huyghenian (H)

40* for Kellners and Modified Achromats (K, MA)

50* for Plossls (except 40mm, which is 40*)

Thanks!

[McAldo]

In the actual scope I find this quite helpful http://www.csgnetwork.com/telefov.html when I first started and I saw fov 50deg on an EP I naively assumed thats what you'd get thru the scope where as its closer to 0.5-1deg, very confusing, so 'apparent' fov is very different to the 'actual' fov, as if this hobby isnt complicated enough haha.

Thanks for the link to the calculator!

I didn't quite expect the same FOV when mounted, but surely not that narrow either, I agree

But then, my glasses are in the way too, but even without I need to get really close to get some fov, with the oculars I have now at least,

And I never realized having long eyelashes might be a problem one day. They splatter all over the glass so I can't see a thing, unless I keep my eye wide open, rabbit crossing the highway style .

Alternative oculars are definitely high on my list right now

[nephilim]

I know exactly what u mean, i wear glasses too & when i got my scope the 25mm supplied wasnt too bad but the 10mm was horrendous (ive heard that the 10mm supplied with most scopes is pretty naff tho)so i bit the bullet & spent £86 on a Meade HD-60 9mm, the difference was amazing, 17mm eye relief, great optics, the viewing is very sharp & 'snaps' into focus, so i'd say get a good 8-10mm for plantery. As for the seben, iv heard some not so good reviews about it, but with a half decent EP u should at least be able to get something out of it until u get a better scope. I cant believe there was no finder with it, without one you'll be pretty much stumped when trying to find anything but the moon, I'd strongly recommend this http://www.telescopehouse.com/acatalog/Telrad_Red_Dot_Finder.html yes its £40 ( you'll be lucky to find a second hand one as they're so popular) but even a standard red dot finder will set u back £20 or so, with the Telrad it projects three concentric circles into the sky & when used in conjunction with FREE downloadable Telrad maps http://www.solarius.net/Pages/Articles/dbArticle.aspx?artid=messier_finders you can easily star hop from one object to the next. You can attatch it temporarily with cable ties & when you upgrade to a more suitable scope you can attatch it permenantly with the 'sticky' mount it comes with (These will 'stick' on for years).Good luck & let me know how you get on.

Steve

[McAldo]

I know exactly what u mean, i wear glasses too & when i got my scope the 25mm supplied wasnt too bad but the 10mm was horrendous (ive heard that the 10mm supplied with most scopes is pretty naff tho)so i bit the bullet & spent £86 on a Meade HD-60 9mm, the difference was amazing, 17mm eye relief, great optics, the viewing is very sharp & 'snaps' into focus, so i'd say get a good 8-10mm for plantery. As for the seben, iv heard some not so good reviews about it, but with a half decent EP u should at least be able to get something out of it until u get a better scope. I cant believe there was no finder with it, without one you'll be pretty much stumped when trying to find anything but the moon, I'd strongly recommend this http://www.telescope...Dot_Finder.html yes its £40 ( you'll be lucky to find a second hand one as they're so popular) but even a standard red dot finder will set u back £20 or so, with the Telrad it projects three concentric circles into the sky & when used in conjunction with FREE downloadable Telrad maps http://www.solarius....messier_finders you can easily star hop from one object to the next. You can attatch it temporarily with cable ties & when you upgrade to a more suitable scope you can attatch it permenantly with the 'sticky' mount it comes with (These will 'stick' on for years).Good luck & let me know how you get on.

Steve

Thanks for the advice, Steve!

I see your point that getting a telrad in the end is more cost effective, as I will be able to keep using it if I get a better scope.

Actually, until you mentioned it I had no clue what telrad was, I saw the option in stellarium but thought it was some really expensive equipment.

I am getting better at pointing my scope, managed to frame quite fast M42 and the pleiades, even if the first looks like blueish rather than red and blue like on stellarium, and of the pleiades I could see the constellation but no nebulosity.

Unless I went completely wrong, of course, but probably it's just London night sky along with the additional light pollution from the moon.

So, cable and ties are the best solution to temporarily attach a finder? My scope doesn't even have mounting holes, so I guess I'll have to go with that.

What's a Steve-Sky-Watcher 130m EQ2 ?

Did you build your own scope??

Happy new year!

Aldo

[nephilim]

I wish i was skilled enough to build my own scope haha, its a bit misleading now i look at it, my names Steve & my scope is the Skywatcher Explorer 130m, you only have 5lines to put ur gear etc info in so I should really change the colour of my name Having no mounting holes isnt really a problem, many people with reflectors (NOT refractors or Mak's) drill holes 4 additional equipment & does no damage, but you've to be careful to get no shavings etc on your mirror. Cables ties are the best way to attatch until u have a scope ur going to keep, even on that u'll need ties so u can set it & align it to the scope then u mark it off & attatch with the strips, you can buy seperate mounts for a telrad too so u can swap it around if u have multiple scopes.

As for M42, Stellarium can be a little misleading as you'll not see proper colour in the scope (You only get that with long exposure AP) but the blue/green you saw is the true colour ( one of the only ones that will show any colour with a 130mm scope), with M45 you'll only see the bluish nebulosity with a scope of 200mm+. Anyway, a Telrad is a great bit of kit & as you've seen u can also use it with Stellerium too.

Steve.

[nephilim]

Thanks for the advice, Steve!

I see your point that getting a telrad in the end is more cost effective, as I will be able to keep using it if I get a better scope.

Actually, until you mentioned it I had no clue what telrad was, I saw the option in stellarium but thought it was some really expensive equipment.

I am getting better at pointing my scope, managed to frame quite fast M42 and the pleiades, even if the first looks like blueish rather than red and blue like on stellarium, and of the pleiades I could see the constellation but no nebulosity.

Unless I went completely wrong, of course, but probably it's just London night sky along with the additional light pollution from the moon.

So, cable and ties are the best solution to temporarily attach a finder? My scope doesn't even have mounting holes, so I guess I'll have to go with that.

What's a Steve-Sky-Watcher 130m EQ2 ?

Did you build your own scope??

Happy new year!

Aldo

And a happy new year to you too.

[moogoomonkey]

The 130P is on my Uni wishlist. Sounds like a brilliant piece of kit, can't wait for your first light report!