|
So I finally got back up to bintel yesterday and picked up my Skywatcher 6" dobsonian scope. I'm very happy with the quality of the product and what I got for the price. The instructions were clear and informative and the unit was pretty easy to put together. The scope seemed pretty much in collimation straight out of the sealed box. The unit came with two eyepieces, marked "super 10 mm" and "super 25 wide angle long eye relief". The finderscope is a fixed 6x30 on a simple dovetail mount locking ring with easy alignment screws. The focuser assembly is solid and simple to operate, and can accept either 1.25" or 2" eyepieces. The provided eyepieces look like pretty basic generic quality but worked well enough. The box for the base was marked as 12 kg and the box for the scope was marked as 7 kg. The scope box fits ok on the back seat of my car. I haven't tried putting the constructed base in the boot yet but I'm pretty sure it will fit ok.
I finally got it out for a brief look late last night after the rain stopped and before it clouded over again. I found Saturn in under 2 minutes using the finder scope that I'd just roughly aligned by eye and the 25 mm eyepiece. I switched to the 10 mm eyepiece and had to refocus a little. Nice! I could clearly see the little ball with ring around it, unmistakable. Pretty sharp & bright and far superior to what I could make out with my old 20x50 refractor, though I couldn't make out much definition on this first attempt. I can see myself wanting a 2- or 3- x barlow and/or 6mm planetary eyepiece soon enough.. I had to move the base to keep aligned after about a minute due to rotation but the whole thing sure stays nice and still when required. Nice pleasing starfields with the 25 mm EP but I didn't really spend much time trying to find anything in particular.
I notice that I'll need to practise using the EP's or get some rubber eyeguards as I have a left dominant eye and cannot close my left eye independent of the right - makes using the finder scope a bit inconvenient for me - I have to either squint with my head right against the tube or go around the other side. I'm going to borrow a mate's red dot finder and see if that's any easier for me.
So there we have it. I'm looking forward to spending some time getting to know this one while I learn the ropes. cheers!
|