Impatience and Disappointment

My son persuaded me not to wait until he was away to set the telescope up and that he was ideally qualified to help at 7am this morning when he woke me up. With some trepidation I set about unpacking everything and mustered the courage to look at the instruction booklet.

I needn't have worried - the instruction booklet that came with my Sky-Watcher Explorer 130pm was very straight forward to follow and gave simple steps that I could easily understand. In less than an hour me and my 6 year old son had put it all together. He is extremely happy as this means he has a big box to play in! Although when it's in the box it all seems too heavy to be portable, once it is put together it doesn't seem so hard to move around. Balancing the scope was relatively simple although i really need to get my head around the equatorial mount it comes with.

I understand the concept of the sky appearing to rotate around the north pole (and therefore pretty much Polaris). How that translates into the movement adjustments I can make on my mount is causing me to scratch my head a bit. Hopefully it will become clearer once I've pointed it at something and tried to track it for a while. Unfortunately we had torrential rain in the hour before sunset this evening and thick clouds are blowing over so I have been unable to try it out. It is supposed to be clearer tomorrow night so I'll try again then.

What I have noticed while I was looking at some of the documentation that came with my scope is that the tube seems longer than the picture on the advert when I bought it. It seems like I have been sent the Sky-Watcher Explorer 130EM and not the 130PM. The difference being the EM has a focal length of 900mm and the PM is 650mm with better optics and £20 dearer. On the positive side the shop I bought it from supplied upgraded eyepieces. I wonder if they knew it was wrong and have tried to somewhat make up for it? I'll give ScopesnSkies a call on Tuesday because I ordered the 130PM on the back of all the reviews I read online and not to get what I asked for is disappointing. Now the scope is all set up (and most of the packaging recycled already) I might as well give it a go tomorrow and see what it's like.

Delivery!

My Sky-Watcher Explorer 130PM telescope was successfully delivered today. I was surprised how big and heavy the box was. You don't get the sense of scale from shop photos - I feel very sorry for the poor delivery man who has had to carry the thing to the house twice now.

Unfortunately I was homeworking today so I couldn't open it all up immediately but I had a peak inside the box this evening...to find another box! And inside that box was...another box! I finally got to the individual boxes inside and looking at the instruction manual I think I'm going to need a good long evening to put it all together away from my enthusiastic but accident-prone 6 year old. This is going to be frustrating because I won't get a chance to set it up until Monday.

First impressions are that everything seems to be there and well protected in numerous boxes. it comes with the necessary tools which is a nice touch. The eyepieces I ordered seem to have been upgraded by the shop, which is nice. I'm quite looking forward to trying to put it all together on Monday.

My First Telescope

I am waiting for my new telescope I ordered. It should come tomorrow, which is exciting! I'm a big kid when it comes to parcels arriving.

After doing quite a bit of research online I decided not to jump in too deeply and I have ordered a recommended beginner's scope. After a great deal of internal debate I finally went for the Sky-Watcher Explorer 130pm. It seems to get a lot of good reviews and was less than £200. I could have gone for a more expensive one but I want to see if I take to my new hobby first. This is what it is supposed to look like:

The blurb on the website I looked at gives the following specifications for this scope:

Specification:

Eyepieces Supplied (1.25"): 10mm & 25mm
Magnifications (with optics supplied): x26, x52, x65, x130
Highest Practical Power (Potential): x260
Diameter of Primary Mirror: 130mm - 30% more Light Gathering than 114mm
ALL Sky-Watcher reflector mirrors are Multi-Coated with Silicon Dioxide as standard for Optimum Durability and Long Term Performance.
Telescope Focal Length: 650mm (f/5)
x2 Barlow Lens
R.A. Motor Drive (D.C.) (PP3 battery not supplied)
Parabolic Primary Mirror
0.5mm Ultra-Thin Secondary Mirror Supports
Red Dot Finder
EQ2 Equatorial Mount
Aluminium Tripod with Accessory Tray
*Sky at Night Magazine Group Test Winner*

Frankly I have no idea what some of this means but hopefully it will actually let me see the moon (if it doesn't I have problems because I can see that from here!) and some of the planets and interesting stars but we shall see. I ordered a couple of extra eyepieces so I can get the full potential power from the scope and to give me a few more options.