Woohoo! Skyline 250px ready to rock 'n' roll!

[greglloyd]

Hi all!

Just took delivery of a Skyliner 250px today! I've been a previous happy owner of a Skywatcher scope but had been out of astro for a while after my son was born. Just couldn't get the time and sold my last scope. Regretted that..

Just missed the deep sky views so much - and with Saturn's rings opening up again I just had to get back into it all!

Anyway, the scope arrived today, built up this evening, and has just been collimated - ready for first light!

I'll post my first light report here as soon as I get some decent skies. It's a nice and dark site here at times and hoping for some good views! There are some breaks developing here this evening so I may get a slim possibility of some viewing around midnight or so - although the moon will obviously get in the way.

Anyway, let's see if I can get a view of Saturn and M13 later :-)

[brantuk]

Welcome back to observing Greg and good luck with Saturn. Nice scope

[Horus]

So it's you !!! Cloudy skies over here in East Yorkshire tonight

[Steve_meg]

brillant telescope, got one as my first telescope a few weeks ago. saturn looks great, although being new havent found the M13 yet.

[greglloyd]

Yep! My fault for all the cloud! The breaks earlier are filling in here too right now :-(

Looking forward to really putting this scope through the paces. I'm quite familiar with plenty of objects in the sky so I will be looking forward to viewing them all again through the 10 incher :-D

Love globs and galaxies. Really looking forward to getting good resolution on M13, M3, etc!

[greglloyd]

On the topic of eyepieces.. previously I used Televue Plossl - however what do you guys think are the best sub £100 eyepieces to buy these days? Looking for decent apparent field of view and sharp images. Some of the item I am considering are :-

Baader Hyperion

TMB Planetary

Meade 5000 plossl

Any personal recommendations? (taking into account the fast F/5 focal ratio)

I'm looking for a 5 or 6mm planetary, 10mm, 14 - 25mm, and 32 - 40mm for wide views.

[greglloyd]

The Skyliner got it's first light tonight! Broken clouds allowed for some clear intervals which I took full advantage of.

Obviously, tonight was never going to be the best conditions with the bright moon washing out the sky and the atmopshere not being particular steady from my location. Still, it gave me a chance to do some fine tuning of the collimation of the scope with some of the brighter stars.

Regardless of the conditions, I had a go at a few targets :-

1) Saturn - I only have the stock eyepieces right now (see above) which means Skywatcher 25mm (48x) and 10mm (120x). Still, I managed to get some fairly crisp views of Saturn this evening when the seeing allowed with promenant cloud belts, a good view of the rings, and quite a number of moons. Titan, Dione, Rhea, and Tethys were all easily visible. A nice high power planetary eyepiece is on the buying list!

2) M13 - The Great Globular was rising in the east and I decided to point the scope for a quick test. At 120x the cluster was resolved nicely. With the bright sky the cluster's brightness was reduced so I await darker skies for a more impressive view. However I could still see it resolved well in towards the core regardless.

3) M51 - Despite the bright skies, M51 was picked out easily enough. However I await darker skies as I've seen much better views before in moonless skies. Tonight it was mainly the cores that were visible with a faint hint of the halo surrounding. I've previously seen detail in this galaxy before with a smaller scope from my location so I am hopeful for better results in darker skies.

4) M81 / M82 - Swung the scope around for a look at this pair of galaxies. Again, the moon did it's worst with the washed out sky, however the galaxies themselves were easily viewed in the scope but without the detail I have previously seen in M82 under good skies. Even though, I was still able to pick out the prominent dark rift in the middle of M82 this evening. So I expect great views once the moon gets out of the way.

All in all, a good start for the scope. I think it did well to pick out the details it did under the bright moonlit sky and average seeing conditions. I look forward to giving it a better run in when the moon gets out of the way.