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Hi and good morning Sgl Im thinking of buying a Skywatcher 200p on an Eq5 mount if i buy all the proper eye pieces and stuff will it be a good telescope what will i be able to see and how clear  will it be ?,all help and advice appreciated thanks again enjoy your weekend peace & light  everyone :) 

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Skywatcher generally makes good telescopes. The 200P on an EQ mount is quite a large telescope, have you realised that? 

With a 200mm aperture telescope you will be able to see details on the moon, on planets, like Jupiter and Saturn and a lot of deep sky objects. You can even see that with a smaller telescopes as well. The moon and the nearby planets are bright. Deep sky objects vary in brightness. Some are very bright and easy to see, others will be faint grey fuzzies and sometimes very small. Observing under a very dark sky makes the faint fuzzies a lot brighter.

As the telescope is a newtonian, you will have to learn to collimate your telescope to see sharp images. This is something you'll probably need to do at the start of every session. People who do it often say that collimating takes them a few minutes.

There is also a Dobsonian 200mm telescope that lets you see the same images, but it has a cheaper mount. It is another system though, where you cannot follow the object in a motorized way, like you can do on an EQ5 when you install a motor drive on it.

The Dobsonian model has a bit of a longer focus length (the f/-number specified with the scope). That makes it a little easier to collimate and is kinder to low quality eyepieces than a lower f/-number.

The EQ5 mount with a following motor is particularly well suited for astrophotography.

 

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Good morning to yourself.

It will be/is a 'good telescope'.

You will be able to see lots of things - solar system and beyond.

How 'clear' it will be is beyond the prediction of mortals. (? or ?)

Don't go rushing to buy lots of eyepieces at first. Use the scope and become familiar with how everything works. After a while you will have a better idea of what you want to add. The seminal 'Turn Left at Orion' is a book that will help you learn in many ways.

Most important - have fun.

Peace and light back at ya.

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I am going to ask what it is that you want to do with it, both now and in say 6 months time ?

The 200P on an EQ5 is sort of as small a mount as you can put a 200P onto, many would say it is too small as there is no real expansion available to you. The normal expansion being the owner wants to start taking images. If you are thinking of a nice decent sized reflector to view then "swap" over to imaging be aware that the equipment used is often different. The simplest way to explain it is that for visual you tend to get a biggish scope on a smallish mount, for imaging you tend to get a smallish scope on a biggish mount.

So an 80mm ED on an HEQ5 is fair for imaging (I have an HEQ5 for a WO GT-81 imaging scope), a 200p on an EQ5 is fair for visual. People will be using a 70mm WO Star refractor on an EQ6 for the stability, and that will not be uncommon.

So to return to the initial question: What is it that you want to do with the scope now and in 6 months?

Just that if in 6 months you ask all about getting images do you want to be told sell the scope and buy something smaller and while doing that sell the mount and buy something bigger :eek::eek::eek:. Almost the only "safe" option is get a BIG mount, which should then manage both.

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Beware of deep sky imaging on an EQ5 with motor. It is absolutely NOT the right mount for the job and would give poor reslults if it gave anything useful at all. If you wanted to do deep sky imaging you would really want the NEQ6 but might manage it on the HEQ5 which is a different and better mount.

There are incoveninces associated with Newtonians on equatorial mounts. They are no more than inconveniences but they do exist. For visual observing the undriven Dobsonian mount is cheaper, quicker to set up, more intuitive and more stable - but you do have to nudge it manually to follw an object.

Olly

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