skymax 127 supatrak auto first impressions

[PRG]

Well, had my scope a couple of weeks now, and have managed to get out with clear skies quite a few times. First night of clear sky, I nearly ran home after work, and went straight out. First object to look at was Jupiter, it was getting low and the seeing was not great, but I was still amazed at seeing the banding on the planet, and the 4 galilean moons.

Next, looked at M42 the Orion nebula, looked great through the supplied 25mm EP, and filled the 10mm, with the trapezium nice and clear.

I looked at the Pleiades, had to scan this as it does not all fit into the field of view of the 25mm EP, but very sharp pinpoint stars right to the edge of the field.

I think one of the first things to get is a wider field EP for this kind of thing, maybe a 40mm, any recommendations?

I have found the straight through finder scope gets into some tricky angles, a small camping chair to sit on helped. I am thinking about getting either a red dot finder or a finder scope with a star diagonal.

I am slowly getting used to star hopping, and managed to view M81 and M82 the other night, which I was really pleased about.

I have found the skymax 127 very portable; I can easily move it around the patio and garden to get the best view of different areas of sky. I even ran (literally) down the garden with it to see the ISS and Discovery pass on the 26th Feb, I managed to get a glimpse of the shuttle and ISS as two separate objects, just before docking, they were less than 470 feet apart as the pass began!

The supatrack auto mount (this is the non GoTo mount) is quite easy to set up, just put the scope level and point to north before plugging in the power lead. It seems to track fairly well, with re-adjustments now and again, but I must say, I haven't really spent much time to make sure the mount is level and really pointing directly north before tracking.

[Pakmoto]

Well I can second that, it's a very portable scope, but like you say the finder scope is in need of a right angle view finder

I've found that I can get 3 minutes of tracking even when set level and pointing north, after that it needs a nudge, but like yourself I've only had mine for 2 weeks

so hopefully I'm doing something wrong.

I've read in other threads that due to the slow speed of the 127 that EP quality is not as important as a faster scope,

I can only speak from what I have read but some say that the TMB/BST are a good budget EP,

I'm still deciding on what to get don't know to if I want a zoom or a set of EP's.