Equipment: Skywatcher Heritage 130P

My second telescope used for the MWM challenge is the Skywatcher Heritage 130P. It’s a small (table top) newtonian reflector with a 5 inch (130mm) aperture, on a dobsonian mount.

Skywatcher Heritage 130P

The telescope was a Christmas gift for me this year, and arrived ready assembled in a large(ish) box. The tube extends (Skywatcher called this the flexitube system). Once extended the eyepiece can be fitted and the telescope is ready for use. When not observing the tube is retracted and a cap fitted to give a compact unit which is easily stored.

The telescope has a 650mm focal length and is supplied with 10mm and 20mm eyepieces. These give a magnification of 32x and 65x respectively. A 2x Barlow lens would double these giving a maximum magnification of 130x.

A red dot finder is attached to the scope. This projects an image of a red dot onto the sky when you look through the finder. Once aligned this seems to be vey good for quickly locating objects providing they are bright enough to be seen with the naked eye. The finder does not provide any magnification.

Equipment: Skywatcher Infinity 76 telescope

This telescope was a real eye-opener for me. I first saw one when on of the CAS members brought one along to our Stargazing in Cockermouth event in January 2012. The telescope is very small with a 3 inch (76mm) aperture and only a 300mm focal length. The mount is based on a Dobsonian design, but modified into essentially a ball and socket joint. The rounded based of the telescope just sits on the ‘mount’ and can be pointed in any direction including down to the horizontal position. Set up time is literally seconds!

The Skywatcher Infinity 76

The single eyepiece gives a 30x magnification and has a slot built into it to act as the focussing mechanism. It is also an image correcting eyepiece, meaning there is not inversion of the image when you look through it. That means the scope can be used for normal day time viewing, birdwatching for example. The telescope is designed to appeal to kids, and is shaped like a rocket ship (or penguin?) and even comes with a pack of stickers to customise your telescope. That said it is a reasonable instrument which can be used to observe astronomical objects.

So having seen one last January, I decided to buy one almost immediately. The best news was they only cost around £45.

Having used the scope I bit, I can report it works well for brighter objects like the moon and Jupiter, and for scanning the milky way etc. It’s hard to find specific deep sky objects as there is no finderscope and this is certainly it’s main disadvantage for astronomical use. It is an excellent ‘scope to buy for young children wanting a first telescope since although they will undoubtably struggle to find things in the night sky, they can use it for terrestrial observing quite easily.

[Update March 2015] Skywatcher do another similar but more normal looking telescope the Skywatcher Heritage 76P which appears to have the same optics (mirror) but has a small finderscope and a rack and pinion focuser. This still costs less than £50 (in 2015) and is probably a better bet for astronomical observing. Celestron have a similar product the Firstscope 76mm.

Equipment: 15 x 70 binoculars

My 15 x 70 binoculars are probably my favourite observing equipment. They provide almost twice the light gathering power and twice the magnification of my 7 x 50 binoculars. They are really portable, don’t take up much storage space and can be quickly grabbed to take advantage of a break in the clouds, or taken on a walk to a dark site. That said, the down side is they are larger, heavier and therefore more difficult to keep stable. For that reason I often, although not exclusively, use a tripod or monopod to keep them steady.

They can be hand held if needed, although it is best to stabilise them by bracing against a wall or something similar.

If you are interested I got my 15 x 70s from Strathspey Binoculars, and found the service and binoculars to be excellent.

Equipment: 7 x 50 binoculars

My most basic observing equipment is a simple pair of binoculars, 7 x 50s. These are widely available at relatively low price. I picked mine up from a discount supermarket a few years ago for £15. These types on binoculars are ideal for starting astronomy and can be used to observe a variety of objects. They can, of course, be used for terrestrial observing as well.

The numbers indicate the power and size of the lens. The 7 means the view is magnified 7 times, and the 50 means each of the large (objective) lens is 50mm in diameter. The binoculars, as well as magnifying the image, also have the effect of funnelling more light into the eye. A typical eye pupil diameter is 5 – 7 mm, so the binoculars are around ten times the diameter. As the amount of light entering is determined by the area the binoculars have around 50 times the light gathering power of the naked eye. This allows fainter objects to be viewed.

Binoculars are very intuitive to use, just pick them up and point. Finding bright objects is relatively simple, faint ones take a bit more practice.