Skywatcher ED150.... The Arrival

[DJ N]

Hi all

Finally after months of waiting, I have just picked up my new Skywatcher ED150. I literally ordered it the day the new Skywatcher catalogue came out (late last year) with this particular scope listed.

I think this scope will be a perfect match for my recently acquired Discmounts DM6.

Photos to follow shortly... and hopefully first light. I imagine with a purchase such as this, Adelaide will be clouded out for months.

Cheers

D

[floyd_2]

I'm hoping that a big purchase like this won't have the power to ruin weather all the way up to Sydney mate. Looking forward to your first light feedback on this giant.

[DJ N]

A couple of more shots of the new baby.... including one with yours truly for perspective purposes...:thumbsup:

Had a very non-scientific first glance with the scope.... supported the scope on the window ledge and a quick glance at the moon.... through a glass window:eyepop:.... with a 24mm Panoptic, and I must say, I am very confident that this scope will meet expectations. Although a very rudimentary glance, could not see any "purple", which through my 150mm achro is clearly visible.

So far so good. Perhaps tomorrow night I will be able to mount it and have a better opportunity for a more formal first light.


Cheers

D

[Atmos]

Not a small scope!
Looking forward to hearing a more formal first light :)

[MortonH]

Very cool. Looking forward to a proper first light report.

[ab1963]

Nice thing ,Can’t go wrong with the ED Skywatcher scopes

[DJ N]

Hoping for a first light tonight. Forecast are indicating clear skies tonight, however, seeing may not be the best.

Cheers

D

[glend]

Even with poor Seeing you can do some important colour fringing tests on stars and planets. Good luck, looking forward to your assessment.

[FlashDrive]

Nice one .... :)

[thebonz]

Congrat's on the new scope. I am interested to know how much back focus it has and also if the cell is collimatable. If you could pass this info on it would be greatfully appreciated
John

[william123]

Looking forward to your report!

Bill

[DJ N]

Hi all
Last night I managed a more formal first light with the new Skywatcher 150ED. I set up just after 7pm and was out there for around two and a half hours. I haven’t had a session this long with a scope for some time!

In terms of conditions, clear skies with temperatures in the very low teens (Centigrade) with a light northerly breeze. Seeing was not the best, I imagine around 5 or 6 out of 10. The moon was up with around 30% illumination, so not the best nights for deep sky target.

I had the 150ED mounted to my Discmounts DM6, which I recently purchased secondhand.

To summarise first light… WOW!

I left the telescope out for about 20 minutes to acclimatise. My first target for the night was Omega Centauri with the 31mm Nagler. Even with the glow of the moon, I was mesmerised. The stars were pin pricks of light….. I bumped up the magnification with a 24mm Panoptic and then with my 13mm Ethos. This certainly darkened the background and clearly resolved the stars into individual components.

I am far from an optics expert, however I performed a couple of star tests to ensure concentric airy rings. I decided on the XW5 (240x) as with the XW3.5, it was too mushy because of the seeing. I used Spica, as it was fairly high in the sky. In focus, with the XW5, I could not detect any ‘spurious’ colour. Intrafocus, I could make out distinct airy rings with a slight purple haze. Extrafocus, the rings were not as distinct, but with a yellowy-green haze. I put this down to the seeing conditions.

By this time, Jupiter was high in the sky. With my first glance, I was captivated. At 240x with the XW5, there was no purple flaring. I have recently been using a 150mm f8 achro, and the purple is unmistakeable. With the 150ED, it was a f-word moment. The seeing was shimmering in and out, but in the moments it steadied, I could clearly make out the red spot…. It was very distinct. It literally gave me goosebumps. I could also make out different bands of browns and creams on the planet, and I swear at times I could see the festoons and ‘stuff’ people talk about. In my excitement, I went inside and got my 15 year old daughter to come out and have a look. She has only looked through scopes a handful of times, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to get some unbiased comment. Her first comment was… “wow, what is that blood red spot?”

As a side note, this was also a perfect opportunity to have unbiased feedback with regards to hand tracking with my recently acquired Discmounts DM6. At high magnifications with XW5 and XW3.5 eyepieces, I have not found any difficulty whatsoever in keeping objects in the centre of the field of view. I explained to my daughter that she will need to nudge the scope to keep Jupiter central. She sat there for a couple of minutes looking at Jupiter. I asked her if she had any problems with continually moving the scope. She replied that it was very smooth and easy. This certainly reinforced my own experience with this wonderful mount.

By this time, my daughter had had enough. I got her to quickly have a look at the moon and asked her if she could comment on any shades of colour she could see. We tried a range of eyepieces including the XW5 as well as the 13mm and 8mm Ethoi. Certainly no purple.

I now had the scope back to myself. I spent awhile looking at the moon at various magnifications, along the limb and terminator, and the scope certainly ‘snapped’ into focus. In focus, there was no apparent CA.

With the XW5 in place, I had a high powered look at Alpha Crux. I could clearly split this system into the three components at 240x….. I assume this is a positive?

Following this, I did a bit of a tour of the sky. I viewed some of the usual suspects in Sagittarius such as M8, M20, M16 and M17. With the NPB filter in place, very distinct nebulosity, even with the moon up. I then spent some time chasing a few globulars such as M69, M70, Pavo and a few others. Then onto a few open clusters.

I finished up with Saturn with the XW5 (240x). By then the seeing was a bit worse that what it was before, and I decided to call it a night.

In summary, this is a killer scope. Sure, I would love to have a TOA150, but for the price I paid, this was certainly worth the wait and risk. The focuser is your typical Skywatcher focuser as found on the other ED variants, but I had no trouble using my 2 inch Baader click lock diagonal and 31 Nagler, which in total, weigh around 1.4kg. In the future, I will more than likely replace this focuser with a Moonlite or Feathertouch to pimp up the scope, and bring some additional weight to the eyepiece end of the scope.

There you have it, quite a successful first light.

Cheers

Daniel

[Merlin66]

Daniel,
sounds great!

[Slawomir]

Great review of a beautiful instrument - thank you Daniel for sharing :thumbsup:

[GrahamL]

great report ,,are you going to get the extension for the mount ?


I have a DM 4 and find it a great piece of kit , not sure it would hold the weight of your big scope though

[Atmos]

Great first light Daniel! As nice as a TOA-150 would be to look through, it is ruddy heavy and would take considerably longer to cool with its wide air spacing compared to a doublet :)

[glend]

How is the collimation? I am reading reports on CN of Teleskop-Services finding collimation problems on ED150s arriving from Synta.

[casstony]

I recall Meade having collimation issues with their ED doublets back in the day. Heavy lenses and strong curves need a well designed cell.

[Tropo-Bob]

I brought a 5 inch Meade ED F9, secondhand at a cheap price about 3 years ago. I have occasionally taken it to the Atherton Tablelands. It seems to have had no problems holding collimation.

I gather the problem was with Meade's larger sizes (particularly the 7 inch). Nevertheless, people tend to not realize this, which is probably why I obtained a really good scope so cheaply. :)

[DJ N]

The collimation on mine seems fine. Concentric airy rings at 343x.

Perhaps once I have better conditions, I will have the opportunity for a more thorough analysis.

Cheers

D

[glend]

That is good to here. And thankfully for us, we are much closer to the factory than the North American market, and they basically travel by ship to Australia, according to Andrews. So the only real shock would be local road transport.