I am thrilled beyond words to finally say I have the Sky-Watcher 12″ Collapsible Dobsonian telescope with SynScan on order. A very dear client ordered one of these as a 16″ nearly two years ago, and I have been insanely jealous ever since.
This will make conducting stargazing at my night sky tours SO much easier. Because the secondary mirror is connected to the primary mirror, I shouldn’t have to recollimate every time I take it out. It also has an extensive object library so, once I have it oriented to the night sky, I can just select deep sky objects and the telescope will slew over to them. While I know the night sky quite well, the manual process of star hopping to find the deep sky objects is time consuming and takes away from astronomy observing.
The telescope this will replace, a Meade Lightbridge 12″ Dobsonian, requires manually finding deep sky objects by star hopping, and it doesn’t track. With my new Sky-Watcher, finding the objects will be much faster, and the telescope will track, so I won’t have to continually re-center the object being observed.
This will be especially beneficial for the stargazing night sky tours I conduct. I often do these tours for groups of 100 or more, so having a telescope that tracks means more people can observe, since I won’t have to manually track the deep sky objects.
Another benefit is that it will make viewing deep sky objects in more urban environments easier. Currently, I use star hopping to find the deep sky object, a galaxy or nebula, for example, that I wish to observe. In urban skies, with a Bortle 5 or 6 rating, and sometimes even a Bortle 4 rating if there are local lights, like at a hotel, the stars I need to guide on aren’t visible. I am unable to see the guide stars with which to star hop, so it is far more difficult to find the deep sky objects. With this Sky-Watcher, once the telescope is oriented to the local night sky, I will be able to simply select a galaxy, nebula or cluster from the object library and the telescope will move over and point to it. Although the object may be a bit washed out because of ambient light pollution, it will still be visible and my night sky tourists will be thrilled to see these objects for themselves.
If you’d like to learn more about a night sky tour for your YMCA, Girl Scout, or Boy Scout troop, a private event for an anniversary, birthday or Christmas present, or entertainment for a corporate event, hotel, resort, or RV park, please call 858-848-0860 today.
Thanks for reading!!! Have an amazing day and Clear Skies to all!!
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