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Hello from macdee

macdee

By macdee
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macdee

macdee

Posted
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Hello,

I just wanted my use my first post to say thank you to those who took the time to help others who were looking to buy their first telescope on this forum. I was lurking trying to decide what telescope to buy last year and as I had a big birthday coming up I decided to take the plunge and buy a Skywatcher 150p Skyliner dobsonian from Tring Astro. The advice here was very useful. I was very concerned whether I was wasting my money as it was not clear to me what I was likely to be able to see from the light polluted skies of the town in which I live. I shouldn't have worried, whilst their are some slight disappointments, the range of objects I have been able to see has kept me occupied and I have been very lucky to have some very good observing conditions in the last 5 - 6 months, I was even able to use the telescope on the first night of buying it. Found the Andromeda galaxy which was one of the slight disappointments and then the Double Cluster which really made up for it. Looking at Mizar and Alcor was great fun, comparing the stars I could see visually with the split I could see in the telescope. I was hooked.

With the light pollution I suffer seeing galaxies is a challenge and as I say Andromeda was a bit of a disappointment, but only a bit, I mean you are seeing light from another galaxy that has travelled over two million years to get here and I can see that from my back garden! So what if looks like a smudge in the sky?

Anyway I just wanted to add an encouragement to anyone else out there wanting to buy their first telescope. Do it, you won't regret it if you have any interest in astronomy. I would throughly recommend the make and mount I went for: the build quality of the instrument is great and the mount means I can decide to do some observing and be working a few minutes later. The dobsonian mount makes finding things in the sky a lot easier than if you use an equatorial mount (or so I am told by my sister who has an equatorially mounted scope), but beware that you have to manually move the scope to keep things in view, there is no tracking and therefore not a good option if you want to try your hand at astrophotography. The mount is sturdy and solid which makes things easier to see as you don't get a lot of wobble until you are up in the high magnifications. I hope that is helpful.

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macdee

macdee

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Hi and welcome,I have recently bought the same scope and love it, though I will soon be in the market for a couple of better eye pieces.

Hello, I had a 32mm Skywatcher plossl bought for me and a 2x Barlow and have purchased a 8mm Vixen NPL myself. The 32mm is great for scanning the sky for whatever you are trying to find, and the 8mm is good for Jupiter although I recently found that I can see the GRS better with the supplied 10mm and barlow. All eyepieces from First Light Optics who were very helpful in replying to my questions and were very speedy in delivery. The 8mm Vixen doesn't have great eye relief either (FLO pointed this out before I bought it).

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macdee

macdee

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Hi & Welcome.  Thanks for that, I have still to purchase my first scope, so all comments are most helpful.

I love my Skywatcher, there are factors about apeture and portability too. I can carry the 150p with it's base on my own, but I'd love to see what a larger apeture would have given me in terms of what I could see. I have tried a 8" dobsonian at the local astronomy club and it didn't seem much better than my 150p so I was quite happy about that. That said it was an old telescope so that could have something to do with it. I'd love to be able to compare the 200 and 250 versions of the SkyWatcher side by side, but I couldn't justfify spending more than I did so it would have only made me jealous :laugh:

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