SW Skymax 150 - First Light, First Thoughts

[25585]

Be interesting to try an open tube Cassegrain design. No potted air to acclimatise to ambient temperature.....

[iPeace]

1 minute ago, 25585 said:

Be interesting to try an open tube Cassegrain design. No potted air to acclimatise to ambient temperature.....

I will look forward to your reports.

[25585]

8 inch truss Newt could be just the lighter weight solution you need for your AZ8.

[ASSA]

On 11.03.2018 at 22:34, iPeace said:

And as I mentioned, its best nights are yet to come.

Holy words MC will soon come under a calm dark sky, where its natural environment Only the last road ahead of it from the Netherlands to Poland. In May, I am going to an astronomical event in the darkest place in Poland, where even my rural sky has no comparison.

It's last bastion of real dark sky in PL.

 

 

[davidc135]

Isn't the disappointing truth likely to be that this is a poor example?

Hopefully ASSA will find out differently and the Mak will come into its own.

David

[ASSA]

5 hours ago, davidc135 said:

Isn't the disappointing truth likely to be that this is a poor example?

Hopefully ASSA will find out differently and the Mak will come into its own.

David

I'm so sorry but i don't understand that sentence. By saying "this is a poor example" you mean this specific copy of skymax is poor quality?

Skymax is on his way to Poland, will be delivered Mon-Wed next week.

Honestly, I do not anticipate dissatisfaction. I live in a house in the countryside where I have empty fields just behind the plot, but I still make 99% of my observations from the balcony. It is not a large balcony, I could instead of MC look for ED100 or something like that but it would be very hard for me to fit on the balcony. MC gives me what I think is the most important, satisfaction with observation and escape from everyday life. It is tiny, short and I can use bino without any additional Barlow lenses. I hold him right outside the balcony door so it takes me a moment to take him outside after work to cool, go to cook and eat dinner and go back to observe.
MC's are the best choice for me Mike also gave me a great price, I could only thank him and invite for a glass of whiskey and observations through MC or my friend's 20" Truss Newtonian which i already did.

[iPeace]

@ASSA   Looking forward to hearing from you when you are using it.

[davidc135]

20 hours ago, ASSA said:

I'm so sorry but i don't understand that sentence. By saying "this is a poor example" you mean this specific copy of skymax is poor quality?

Skymax is on his way to Poland, will be delivered Mon-Wed next week.

Honestly, I do not anticipate dissatisfaction. I live in a house in the countryside where I have empty fields just behind the plot, but I still make 99% of my observations from the balcony. It is not a large balcony, I could instead of MC look for ED100 or something like that but it would be very hard for me to fit on the balcony. MC gives me what I think is the most important, satisfaction with observation and escape from everyday life. It is tiny, short and I can use bino without any additional Barlow lenses. I hold him right outside the balcony door so it takes me a moment to take him outside after work to cool, go to cook and eat dinner and go back to observe.
MC's are the best choice for me Mike also gave me a great price, I could only thank him and invite for a glass of whiskey and observations through MC or my friend's 20" Truss Newtonian which i already did.

Yes, that is what I meant. I'm sorry to sound negative and best wishes for your observing experience.  David

[iPeace]

On 3/11/2018 at 20:32, davidc135 said:

I haven't read all the posts here

Have another go.

[davidc135]

19 hours ago, iPeace said:

Have another go.

Yes, mea culpa!  But I've read them all since and formed my opinion. It seemed to me that your lengthy and rigorous assessment of the Mak was damning but that it would be unfair for all Skymax 150s to be so judged, at least as lunar scopes. Well, right or wrong, time will tell.

ASSA, on a more positive note, insulating the scope was mentioned earlier. There's a thread on the cats and casses subforum of Cloudy Nights where it is claimed, with evidence, that cooling and tube current issues can be quickly, virtually eliminated  in scts and Maks. Very impressive stuff.

David

 

[25585]

Not all Newtonians are created equal. Mike's 150mm, may be higher quality per se against other same size Newts, than the Mak was, against other Maks or Schmidts.

 

[ASSA]

C'mon guysTake a deep breath and chill I'm so excited to get this scope into my hands, don't ruin this

[nightfisher]

Hej ASSA, i think you will be delighted with the skymax 150, just remember to cool it a bit before using it, start with low power eyepiece and push the power as it cools further, what eyepieces do you own? i have owned 2 skymax 150 pro scopes and they have been very good

[dweller25]

Hello Luke,

I thought long and hard between choosing the Skymax 150 or a C6 SCT.

I chose the C6 - only because it is much lighter - which is very important to me.

One trick I found with the SCT is to wrap it in a couple of layers of reflectix - it makes the air in the OTA much more stable and slows corrector dewing down too.

Good luck

 

[ASSA]

Hey, i always cooling down my MC 127, even leaving it on balcony at all night till planets we're be higher. Now I have a small amount of glasses because I invested in bino and I had to change the set to cheaper. But...  pair of 18 mm BCO with Skymax 150, 1,25 diagonal and bino should get me around ~140x and 1.0 mm exit pupil which is the best in my opinion. I'll have a pair of Celestron Omni 12 mm Plossl too, they are just little less worse than vixen orthos in the 40" of central FOV, i have mada a small comparison between 2xOrtho vixen 12.5 mm and 2xOmni 12mm. They work very well in MC, having troubles just in last 10" from edge.

I have bought a pair on aliexpress for 30$:)

And a pair of 23 aspheric just in case i would like to watch full disc of moon. I'll buy 32 mm plossl for summer Globular clusters as well.

C8 vintage version JAPAN on fork mount is my dream set. But it must wait a couple of years:) Now Skymax will have its five minutes.

[nightfisher]

The 18mm BCO in bino viewer will be a dream with 150 MC

[ASSA]

They're a dream even in 127. Those "eyeguards" are so awesome, even in daylight looking through pair of BCO its like in absolute darkness, zero light from outside. Optically they're on good level but those 10" of additional FOV add some kind of abberation and they're not ass good blackened like a regular orthos for example Vixen's and making ghosts on Moon. But in general i like them a lot and waiting till Skymax arrive to enjoy a Jupiter with it.

Clear skies

Luke

[davidc135]

Good luck with everything. David

[ASSA]

MC already has its second first light behind it. For first shot yesterday's morning Jupiter, Saturn and Mars. Jupiter showed a lot of detail, but one of its edges was not 100% sharp. Something did not fit in this view, Mars showed one dark area, Saturn did not even want to show Cassini Division's seed. Anyway, I felt the potential of the equipment because Jupiter had so much detail (maybe not necessarily super sharp) as MC 127 during the opposition and great conditions.
Yesterday evening the sky was cloudless so I left Skymax for a few hours on the balcony to get cold before observation.

I started with the moon and to be honest with ~ 140x I had a problem with sharpening, at ~ 200x I did not have the opportunity to see a sharp image. 200x on MC 150 shouldn't be any problem, even my old MC 127 gives sharp views on Moon a 250x. Something was wrong. I went to M42, the nebula looked fantastic but the stars in the trapeze were not sharp, I thought "ok, maybe it's seeing, there is no need to panic". But it did not give me peace, I aimed at Double star 52 Orionis with a separation of 1'. At 200x it did not even show up as double. Here I knew something was wrong. Next goal I chose the brightest and closest star that was in the sky near 52 Orionis, Betelguese. Defocus image and it looks like that picture.

Maybe not so much, but obviously, the collimation is not good. I suspect that the journey led to this. I checked the collimation with diagonal but even if the tube has a good collimation it may be the fault of reducing the 2 "/ 1.25" fault. In a few days the weather will be good and maybe it will be warmer. I borrow a 4 mm eyepiece and play one night in the "collimation master" on Polar Star.

 

Clear skies

Luke

[ASSA]

Don't worry Mike and pls dont feel sad about that:) As i said in PM ill make a book collimation or if its reduction fault i start to use 2" diagonal instead of my actual 1,25:) I guess collimation fault due to long trip to PL, thats all:)

 

Edit: I am writing this all out of the sense of the obligation to keep Skymax history alive

[davidc135]

I think it's good news, Luke. If it's collimation that can be fixed and now the chances are better that my pessimism was wrong! Looking forward to more news.

David

[ASSA]

Hey,
A few words about the further history of Skymax. I managed to improve the collimations enough that I'm already quite satisfied, its not perfect but gives sharp images.
Last night I had an amazing seeing, watched the moon at 450x magnification and was still sharp. I even did a terrible thing, I put a kellner eyepiece 4 mm with about 30" FOV which gave me about 600x one eye by bino I have only one eyepiece but I just wanted to check how the optics will behave at 4xD magnification ... Hey it came out quite nice, I could sharpen the image, but the smallest detail has disappeared. I suspect that if I had a microfocuser it would be perfect.

Jupiter is also great, full of detail, much more than 127 MCT. Binoviewing with Skymax is amazing. I dont even have temperature aclimate problem with it, im just leave stuff on balkony and going to observe a couple of hours later, best choice for me by now.

Last week i was fighting with M5 cluster using binoviewer and a pair of BCO 18 mm:) 1.0 mm exit pupil, about 140x magnification and i saw a cluster splitted almost to the core:) its amazing, It was dark and I had to focus strongly on the image, but I could easily see the cluster stars, only the "core" (I do not know how to call it in English) was not separated.

[davidc135]

x450! Great to hear everything has turned out so well and that my pessimism was nonsense. My apologies to you, Mike and Skymaxes everywhere.  David

[ASSA]

I have made a comparison of a pair of omni plossl 12.5 mm (200x) VS single celestron kellner 4 mm for 5 bucks (450x). Omni was slightly ahead but it was on the EDGE of perception. Sometimes i even have more fun with kellner because in Omni i saw more seeing "air bulbs". Tested on microcraters around crater "Krieger" and "Schrotters Valley".

Im so happy with that results, it was so fun this night.

Next new moon ill be on astro event and i hope to check globular clusters with skymax and a pair of 32 GSO plossls.

Regards

Luke