An interested six year old

[FLO]

Okay

[pvaz]

Maybe you should add in the details it was designed as a started scope for kids under 10.

Just to make sure you won't have a grown up buying and feeling disappointed. For very young kids it seams to be the right thing.

[FLO]

Good idea, I'll go do that now

[Chris H]

Check out cloudynights.com there are some great photos of the mini dob in use with Nagler eyepieces. £50 scope with a £240 eyepiece, nice. They do get good reviews, the scope that is.

[Tifstorey]

The new Skywatcher Heritage mini Dobsonian is now available from FLO, we will receive our first delivery tomorrow.

If it bombs I shall blame you

I've just received said telescope as a Xmas present. I'm certainly not under 10 (although i may be sharing the same excitement of looking at the moon as a 10 year old would).

I was hoping to get out with it last night but it clouded over (the start of many frustrating times this will happen i guess..).

what i'm wanting to know is what i'm going to be able to see with this scope? You all state it should be for under 10's so adults won't be dissapointed, but with what? I'm only curious, and hopefully this scope might spur me on to get a better, more expensive model sometime in the near future, but for now - i'd be happy gazing at the moon and nearby planets. What planets (if any) am i going to be able to see?

Completely new to this as all that's probably just told you, but i'd appreciate it if someone can give me a few pointers (and maybe even a few tips if your feeling generous) on how i can maximise the use of this thing.

Thanks all,

[matt c]

H i there that scope has the same aperture as my binoculars, and with my binos i can see a good few DSOs (deep space objects) and planets. The andromeda galaxy will be easily within reach although don,t expect to see what you see in books and on tv what you will be looking at is a faint fuzzy smudge unless you're skies are VERY dark. The orion nebula will also be in reach and a bit brighter than andromeda, also very easy to find. As far as planets go jupiters moons will easily be in reach and the closest planets in general will appear as small disks.

I can see all this with my binos hope this helps :)

[brianb]

A small scope like this isn't ideal for planets as it won't have sufficient resolution. However it will give a very pleasing view of the Moon, and will be great for star clusters & the larger, brighter nebulaue. In general small scopes work better than binoculars with the same size objectives & magnification because there is less light scatter in the less complex optical train, and a Newtonian tube is about as simple as you can get. This may not apply to exotic bins at 20x the price but at the same price the small scope usually works better, in my experience.