I had my first experience of Richard Day's work at AstroFest in London a couple of years back. The
Skylight Telescopes long focal length achro refractors were a stunning sight to behold, but being a bit of a "cat" man I already had a long focal length instrument.
Having met Richard and had the opportunity to admire his work a couple of times, when he decided to try a new direction to complement the long achros with a wide field instrument, with a quick email discussion with him I was sold
My Skylight Telescopes 102 F7 R.ED arrived a couple of weeks back, but the weather in Sydney has been pretty awful, and while eager to get first light I've so far found myself catching glimpses between the clouds
My first impressions of the scope, the feeling of joy and awe, haven't subsided in the time it has been sitting in my lounge. It really is a work of art, a beautiful hand made piece that has been skilfully crafted, and I am very proud to own one of the first. My attempts at photographing the scope sadly do not do the finish justice, so I encourage you to come see me at IISAC for a further look. The candy apple red and brass is simply stunning.
For me, the beauty of the scope's form will be in synergy with it's function... my main dark site scope (C11) has a focal length of about 2800mm, so the 102mm f/7 Skylight with its focal length about a quarter of that at 714mm will serve as my wide / rich field scope. Many people criticise SCTs for their narrow FOV, but I feel it presents an opportunity for a perfect complement such as this
From a practical sense, the scope weighs about 7kg and mounts perfectly into TeleVue's 4" clamshell as shown here, riding on a TeleVue Gibraltar. The scope features a Skylight rack and pinion focuser which is smooth and with good resistance, reassuring since I am using with a TeleVue Everbright 2" diagonal and the eyepiece shown, Pentax XW 40mm, weighs 700g. With this eyepiece, this gives me a maximum FOV of about 3.7 degrees, although at about 17x this magnification would only be useful at a dark site. The scope includes a 2" to 1.25" adapter and a brass 1.25" stop (not shown).
As you can probably tell from my gratuitous collection of pictures, I am very pleased with the Skylight 102 R.ED...it is an exquisite piece to behold. I look forward to adding some observational experience once I get some quality time under the stars...I simply can't wait to get under the Milky Way with the Skylight!
, and I agree with your comment on SCT's , perfect for easy high power work and mine is optically/mechically perfect so that's why I have a Takahashi SKY90 at 500mm's fl , its awesome and compliments my C9.25 well as I recon this sweet scope of yours will be to your C11,
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