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The Orion Skyview Pro 8 EQ Reflector Telescope

This page is intended to be both a review of the Orion Skyview Pro 8 EQ telescope as well as a place to put any decent pictures I take through it.


Contents:

Skyview Pro 8 EQ First Impressions
The Glamour of the Moon
Planetary Wonders
Toucam Pro Madness!
*Telescopic Microscopy???


(* Denotes work in progress.)


The Glamour of the Moon

In the days following the arrival of the telescope, the weather was simply disgusting. Its a well known joke amongst amateur astronomers that the purchase of new equipment not only curses the new owner with bad weather, but also any other amateur astronomers within 300 miles of the fool! Well... It seems to work, and I had to wait for days before I could get the scope out for some actual astronomy. Add to this that I knew there was a nearly full moon slowly waning away, so even if I got a clear day I would still suffer awful light polution.

At any rate, on the 11th of December 2003, the clouds parted enough for me to enjoy my first looks at objects not of this Earth. The moon by this time was waning almost-full, but the stability and clarity was enough to make me really gasp. I'd never had a telescope of this aperture before, and I was simply awed by the marvelous, almost crystaline details. Simply fantastic! I also got a good look at Mars, but that's up there in "Planetary Wonders". So, I got out the clock drive controller, the Kodak DC-240, and a mess of batteries to make Jacko proud! I kept five lunar pictures from that evening, and while not spectacular exactly, they aren't at all bad, and loads better than any I'd ever done before with any camera or telescope.
The next lunar outing was on the 27th, where I captured a very nice quarter moon image with the Kodak. The big treat, however, was still to come on the 30th. Seeing was good, and temperatures were nasty cold, but hey, that's astronomy. I took so many very nice pictures that in fact I was able later to stitch them together into a massive 3541x4109 mosaic image of the entire terminator region from end to end. I have to admit that while the Kodak basically sucks for anything planetary not exceptionally bright, the camera simply excells at lunar imaging. No, its not professional quality, but I'll tell you it is surprisingly close! I took multiple shots of every area I could, and also took a rather nice one of the full disk (half moon obviously) at low power, which fit the frame perfectly.

I could tell just by looking at the little camera LCD that I'd done a pretty bang-up job of it, and went in that night shaking miserably with cold but pleased no end. Those pictures are now the candle by which new lunar pictures are weighed, and to date I've not done anything I've considered good enough to bother keeping. Even the Toucam, which I expected to awe me on the lunar images, proved to be an embarassment side by side with the Kodak.


Click an image below to see it at full size!


More to follow,
NightRunner!