First Night and Light for a Skywatcher 150P

[fancybadger]

My first day with my first ‘scope and it clears up around 5pm. Brilliant!

Delivered this morning around 11am (big thanks to Steve at FLO for that! – only ordered it yesterday). First impressions from various family members “it’s quite big, isn’t it?” and “do NASA mind you having this?”.

I spent the days tea breaks putting together the mount, figuring out how to work the ‘t-bars’ and generally admiring the lovely paint job. It came with all required tools, and assembly instructions were downloadable as a pdf from the Skywatcher website. Fairly easy.

Took the scope into the backgarden around 7pm and let it cool off for a while. Being somewhat impatient, I didn’t bother aligning – I’ll learn that trick later I’m sure! I had been looking at Comet Holmes for the previous few clear nights through my bins, so I knew roughly where to point the scope. I popped in the 10mm lens and hurrah, a fuzzy cloud which looks very much like a lot of the pictures, if not quite as vivid.

Feeling well chuffed with myself, I decide to scan over to the Pleiades for a look. Wasn’t too sure how to get the best result for this one and soon get distracted by Mars to the bottom left. First with the 10mm, a bright red spot, then with the Barlow, a tiny disc, then Barlow and 25mm, a small red disc. I was unable to start discerning any features, but I’m sure I’ll get the hang of this eventually.

It was at this point I attempted to bring out my laptop for Stellarium, and possibly locate my first M – Andromeda was up there somewhere apparently and after a futile search I realised I should have ordered the red dot finder as well.

Went back down to the comet – I say ‘went’, I mean stumble - to experiment with the lenses, and discovered I couldn’t really do much better than the 10mm. Watched it for quite some time before realising I had no feeling in my legs and that Adidas are not the best for this sort of weather, I decided to go back inside.

An excellent night! Next stop Saturn, Orion, and a very long lie the next morning.

Chris

[Whippy]

Nice report Chris .

Tony..

[hairycrab]

Good to hear first light was excellent.

[GazOC]

Nice report Chris, sounds like you had a problem free first light.

[themos]

a very long lie the next morning

I guess you meant lie-in but I prefer it like this!

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Nice one Chris, hope you get many more.

Kaptain Klevtsov

[fancybadger]

Cheers all - heading back up to Glasgow on the train today so no viewing tonight (which is a shame - its clear again). So...a red dot finder...new lenses...a car.....

Getting pricey!

Chris

[SteelRat]

Thanks for the report Chris. Sounds like you had fun.

Good scope you got there 8) Time to change yer sig now eh?

[fancybadger]

Thanks for the report Chris. Sounds like you had fun.

Good scope you got there 8) Time to change yer sig now eh?

Done