New scope

[WaveSoarer]

I've been the happy owner of a SW 200P for 4 years, which Mrs WaveSoarer bought for me as a Christmas present. I've been using it at home for both visual and some astrophotography. She later got me a set of 10 x 50 bins to keep me outside and busy while the scope was whirring away with the camera mounted. I've only ever used the 200P at home, as  I've never been brave enough to take it away in my car, and when we ever go off somewhere to a dark site, such as our annual trip to the Scilly Isles, my bins have always been a very good substitute. Anway, this year Santa brought a Heritage-100 on a dobs mount. When I got it out of the box I was struck by how cute it looked (like a baby 200P) and how nicely made it all is. The mount (and a dobs is new to me) felt nice and smooth. The weather was quite horrible over Christmas but we spent New Year at the very spectacular Corsewall Lighthouse Hotel, which is not far from the Galloway dark skies obervatory. The sky cleared after a cloudy and showery day and we set up the scope on the balcony under the lighthouse tower and I had a quick look (with a 20 mm I'd got in addition to the stock EPs from my 200P). The views were very nice indeed (despite the narrow beams of background light from the lighthouse) and the F4 optics easily allowed the entire M45 Pleiades cluster to fill the field of view. The Andromeda galaxy, M31, was an easy spot (a naked eye object from this site) and I was surprised how straightforward M101 was to see also. The real revelation to me was how easy it was to spot M78 in Orion. This is quite faint back home with my 200P but it really shone out with the heritage-100 against the inky black (most of the time) sky. I was really chuffed with the scope and the red-dot finder just felt like I was cheating. It was quite blowy but the small size of the scope and the mount didn't present much windage and so the view wasn't greatly affected by the gusts. The 200P on the EQ5 acts more like a sail in a breeze. The Heritage-100 will make an ideal grab and go for me and I can nip up to my local dark-sky site and view objects that are too low down to see from the garden at home. As the local spot is on top of a hill then a low wind profile will be an advantage.

We brought the scope back in after a while so that Mrs WaveSoarer could take some night photographs of the lighthouse - the wind and the cold slowly got unbearable too.The results of her photos are quite something and I attach one that shows the narrow beams of the light. They come in groups of five flashes, from the grouping of the Fresnel lenses, as can be easily seen from the beams. It presents quite a surreal sight to be honest. To cap it all we also saw the Northern Lights very clearly. Mrs WaveSoarer captured the show very well with the fog horn sharing the view.

[John]

What a lovely place to see the new year in

Great photos and an encouraging report on the new scope too.

[Dave Lloyd]

Smashing photos. The Aurora was a great bonus.

[faulksy]

thats brilliant, made up for you and your little one, thanks for sharing the lovely captures that your wife took

[happy-kat]

Sounds an idyllic way to see the new year in.

Great photos too.

[laudropb]

Lovely photos and a very nice write up.