Brief first light with Skyliner 250px

[AndyWB]

So, on Tuesday night I managed my first light with my new Skyliner 250px. It's an upgrade from a Heritage 130p, so a little bit of a step up in aperture ... and size...

Assembly was easy enough. One of the teflon pads had come off its staples, but when sandwiched between the two boards of the base, it isn't going anywhere. Collimation looked a mile off, but that could just be it's size again - it was the work of a minute to fix. I am thinking of fitting "Bob's Knobs" though.

Getting it out of my flat was a bit of a faff - I had to do a couple of trips, one with the base, then with the tube. The tube is just bulky and awkward, the base is heavier and awkward, but I walked both of them the 50 yards to the gardens behind my flat without any hassle. Assembly was quick and easy.

Aligning the Finder scope, I found that it was nearly aligned only when it was right at one edge of it's adjustment. I'm going to have another look at that issue in the daylight sometime. Still, it was good enough that the crosshairs would put a target (in my case, a distance hotel) in the field of view.

So, time to look at things! I went in search of M15, which disappointingly I couldn't find - until I realised that I was looking at completely the wrong part of Pegasus. Embarrassed, I decided to have a look for M31, which I duly found. I've got to be honest though, by this point I was already missing the having a red dot finder of some type. I found that I'd look through the finder scope, and just end up confused by both the inversion, and also suddenly being able to see lots more stars. I found it hard to know if the bright star in the field of view was what I was trying to point at, or something else that just seemed bright due to the finder scope.

M31 itself was ... okay. Good for in town, but didn't exactly make me go 'wow'. What I did notice was that the stars around it were much more visible. M31, well, I could only see the core, really, and M32 nearby was pretty clear.

Wondering what other Messier catalog targets were around, I went for M33 - and couldn't find it. That could be about my pointing at it - I found the finderscope pretty useless when it came to 'pointing at apparently empty bits of sky'. Then I tried M74, which should be easy enough to find. Judging by the star patterns, I'm pretty sure I was pointing at it - but still I couldn't see it.

At this point I realised - with all this light pollution, there's no contrast, so big diffuse targets weren't going to be good. Instead, I pointed at M45, and wow! The Pleiades were so bright, and there were a lot more stars there than I'd seen in the 130p. To be honest, with the narrower true field of view that the bigger scope has, I couldn't put the entire cluster in the eyepiece at once, but I enjoyed scanning around it. It looked like a shotgun blast of diamonds in the sky.

And by this point it was half ten, and it was time for me to pack up and have some dinner! Only a brief first light, but mostly to check everything works okay.

Thoughts though?

- I can see why most people add Telrads, and why RACI finders seem popular. I've a Rigel Quickfinder on order, and while I'll persevere with the finder scope, I'm not sure that I won't be looking for a RACI one before too long.

- At the risk of saying something controversial, I don't think that the 10" is that much better than the 5" in the heavy light pollution of town. It's also much harder to move outside, which is a bit of a factor when you live in a flat. I'm pretty sure that when I take it somewhere properly dark it'll knock spots off the other, and it is managable for loading into a car, etc.. I'm looking forward to the chance to take it away for a big night out; to be honest, that's what I got it for...

[AlexB67]

Glad you got it all working Andy. I am sure you'll find it'll come alive in time when you have a dark site, or even moderately better skies. 

I'd agree though, and hopefully not too controversial in saying so either,  but it is one reason for keeping the Heritage, the small size and nice wide angle views, for a little scope it can show a remarkable amount of stuff.  Whilst the 10 inch is easy enough to handle, the Heritage is carry on a finger job, such a  convenient little instrument.  I've taken the heritage out to darker skies, probably 4 - 5 times now since May where I can say the skies were a good deal better compared to my backyard, but not the 10 inch so far.  I'd go as far as to say on some targets the Heritage has shown me more comparing it to the 10 inch in my backyard, so a good sky cannot be beat. Of course if I were to put the 10 inch in the same dark spot under better skies, there can only be one winner

I suspect my garden views are probably a bit better compared to your Reading skies, and the difference between the scopes once under the type of skies that sometimes my garden can deliver on the better nights, the difference already becomes really apparent.  The one time I saw M13 so far seeing you mentioned it, for what was actually quite a good sky for my yard on that occasion, the difference in view was just mind boggling at high power, the amount of detail and brightness, no comparison.