I am normally the type of person who thinks buying twice when taking a new interest, i.e. buying for a beginner, and then buying again for someone who has experience in the subject, is a waste of time and money. However, as an astronomy noob, I decided to buy a Skywatcher Explorer 150PL to help me get started in astronomy, even though my interest is in astrophotography and not visual astronomy. Hopefully my explanation will make sense.
- I don’t have a big budget and having spent hours on the Cloudy Nights, and StarGazers Lounge, forums, reading the posts. I realised that the more I dug into the subject, the more confused I got.
- I realised that the best thing for me to do was to learn the basics, how to set up a tripod, how to align with polaris, how to align the finderscope with the scope itself, how to use the lenses and consider when to replace them with better models (having some exerience and being able to compare to what I currently had would help).
- I wanted to strip everything to the basics and build from there. Having a non-motorised eq mount would be a start. I would not use a GoTo or anything like that, I would learn the sky. I would learn how to handle a telescope and not drop an eyepiece down the tube, how to balance the tube on the mount. Anyway, you get the idea.
- I also had limited budget to start off with something that may be limited to the fact I cannot drive for health reasons, I live in the suburb and whereas I can view in the east, I am pretty much limited viewing in any other direction.
- Yes, the 150PL is large but my viewing location is totally protected and pretty much wind proof.
- I can try attaching one of my camera’s directly to the Explorer 150PL and also, at a later date, experiment with attaching a camera and lense to the tripod.
- It has had a good write up.
In my mind, I have a number of opportunities to expand with the 150PL, once I have got the basics in place, and getting the basics in place without overcomplicating the setup is the reason why I bought the Skywatcher Explorer 150PL.