New and keen

[mark geldart]

I have recently bought a Skywatcher Explorer-130p. With it i got super 10mm, super 25mm wide angle long eye relief and a x2 barlow lens. Additionally i bought a moon filter (never realised the moon was so bright)and a couple of philips books and a red tourch from amazon.Bargain. Have also ordered Turn left at Orion as recomended by 99% of you all. Are there any other purchases i should look at to get the best out of my scope. All help and advise welcome. Cheers.

[John]

I think you have got all the basics to get you started. Use the scope a few times and see how you get on with it. You will then be able to make better decisions about your next purchases.

[glowjet]

Depends on how far you want to go, your 130 will reveal quite a lot of DSO. especially from a dark site, as you learn and go forward you may want to expand beyond TL@O, if this is the case, then The Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders is your next step, over 500 pages of what you can expect to see from binos through to medium size scopes, deals with each Constellation in turn, with star maps, how to find with photo and description of what you should see for each target, the book also covers the basics on equipment and the acquisition of star maps, it also comes recommended by a number of forum members, even if you do not purchase it now it is well worth considering for the future, as it is a paperback it costs in the region of about about £16 posted from Amazon.

John.

[slim80]

Hi

Welcome to SGL

I agree with John on this one.get to know your scope first have a good play around with it...then add to your set up at a later date.its far to easy to rush out and buy lots of extra bits and not understand how to use it.

Turn left at orion is a fantastic read its a must have for the novice astronomer.

[mark geldart]

Thanks for your help

[mark geldart]

Thanks. I'll have a look at that.

[Astro_Baby]

Get some warm clothing - it gets chilly out there even in summer

[umadog]

A Telrad finder. I consider these essential. I have a pretty reasonable finderscope on my 12" but I've only used it 3 times; the rest of the time it's not even been attached to the scope. The Telrad works so much better for most purposes and it's much easier to use.

The latest version of Stellarium will generate a Telrad overlay to aid in starhopping. Many atlases and guides also use Telrad overlays as references.

TL@Orion will keep you going for a while, particularly if you don't get to go out that much. It's nice because it covers most classes of objects you can see in a small scope. Following a book such as that, most people go on to see all the Messier objects and nowadays all the available Caldwell objects (a little under half of those are too southerly to be visible from the UK). I'm rather fond of The Messier Album by Mallas & Kreimer, it's brief, to the point, and has a pleasant old-school element to it. Also see James O'Meara's books on the Messier and Caldwell objects. They are more up to date and contain many more details. I can't personally vouch for his Messier work, but the Caldwell book is good. In the longer run, observers head off to do the Herschel 400 list. All these contain almost zero double stars, which is why TL@Orion is nice.