Short Session with the SW mak150

[Captain Scarlet]

Last night, Friday, was clear so I couldn’t resist a quick session. I took out my little-used Skywatcher Mak 150, Zeiss prism diagonal and Skytee2. On the secondary saddle I added my little Leica 62mm apo spotting scope with its 16-48 zoom eyepiece.

Also, I’ve bought a couple of BST eyepieces as a present to replace the stock eyepieces on my wife’s brother’s (kids’) Heritage 130 and thought it might be fun to test that off against my TV DeLite 18.2

No exotic targets, I was Friday-tired, but an easy session with some interesting comparisons.

- The Moon. 70+%, very high, I concentrated on the Aristarchus area. The Leica as expected showed the whole very crisp, but the Mak 150 with the panoptic 35 was noticeably more pleasing when matching magnification. This would be confirmed more stringently later with Polaris B. Mag at 300x seemed to be the limit of where I could get before losing satisfaction.

Swapping between the BST 18 ED and the DeLite 18.2 showed the DeLite better, as expected, but there was not much in it, and difficult to quantify. Both sharp and contrasty, the TV was simply the one I wanted to look through more. I think my bro in law will be very pleased with the new eyepieces. I seriously recommend them, at £35 second hand or even £45 new they are a true bargain. 

- I moved on to Algieba, 4 seconds or so apart. With a max mag of 48x on the little 62mm Leica I couldn’t really split the double, but with the Mak obviously it was easy. Nice.

- Third and last target, mainly to compare Leica and mak150 at similar magnification on Polaris B. Seeing was not great, star test on the Mak at 300 and 500x was a little too wobbly to be useful.

Nonetheless with the Panoptic 35 on the Mak giving me 51x the little Polaris B was beautifully evident, plain as day, lovely. Whereas with the Leica62 at 48x I could JUST ABOUT, and then only fleetingly, discern it. Fascinating, 62mm vs 150mm light-collection and resolution.

I had planned to look straight up at the Mizar system to finish but I was too tired. I packed up and rolled into bed about 2am.

Cheers, Magnus

Edited March 7, 2020 by Captain Magenta