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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 Orion Skyview Pro 8 EQ First Impressions

On December 6th of 2003, we received something we had planned to purchase for years; an astronomical telescope. We wanted a telescope that would be solidly built and powerful, yet affordable, which is no easy task when you consider that I greatly desired one with an equatorial mount and 8" diameter minimum. I had been looking closely at Orion Telescopes and Binoculars, and had decided they were worth consideration. I also in part came to regard the Orion telescopes as worthy due to reading many messages about them on the Usenet forum Sci.Astro.Amateur. No one praised them as top notch instruments, yet no one clamored to bash their quality either, and most had good things to say about optical quality. These telescopes *are* made by a Chinese company named Synta, but nonetheless there is much, much worse to be had.

But I digress. As I said, we selected what we considered to be perhaps not our "dream telescope", but enough of that dream that our finances would allow. We chose the Skyview Pro 8 EQ. At the time, the scope's price was reduced for the Christmas season, plus they were including the free R.A. drive, which I was eager to have. I also added to the order the following items:

An Orion Explorer II 6mm Eyepiece
An Orion Tri-Mag 3x Barlow
An Orion Variable Polarizing Filter
An Orion Steadypix Camera Adapter

All of these would prove to be excellent choices. All items arrived undamaged, and assembly went quickly and easily. The only difficult parts were learning to handle the dovetail mounting of the OTA, which I had never seen let alone used before, and threading the mounting screw for the R.A. drive motor. The reason for the latter being difficult was that the hole for said screw is up and behind one of the latitude adjuster bolts, making it difficult to get at with a screwdriver. My reccomendation is to mount the R.A. motor *before* placing the EQ mount on the tripod.
Once I had the telescope assembled, balanced, and collimated (the secondary was loose!), I took it outside despite the gloomy afternoon. My first revelation was that this telescope is heavy! I hurt my back a little trying to lift it all assembled, then got wise and took it outside in two pieces; OTA and mount/tripod. Now I am even wiser, I break it down into three parts; OTA, mount/tripod, and counterweights. It adds a bit of time to setup and breakdown, but it's much easier on the back and also easier to navigate the doors.

"First Light" consisted of terrestrial viewing of a small campsite we have erected some 1500' across the fields from the house. I began with low power (40x), testing collimation and finderscope alignment, then gradually worked up to highest power (498x) using the barlow and 6mm eyepiece. At first I was a bit dissapointed, but then I remembered two important facts:

1: It was an ugly, gloomy day.
2: A newt reflector is NOT a good daytime scope due to the secondary mirror shadow.

Taking this into consideration, I then broke in the Steadypix camera mount and took the four pictures below using our Kodak DC240 digital camera. The leftmost picture is straight from the DC240 in wide angle, strictly for reference. The left-center picture is the small tent using the 25mm eyepiece, the camera in full telephoto zoom to cut vignetting. The right-center picture is of a chair inside the screen tent and used the 25mm eyepiece plus the Tri-Mag 3x barlow lens for a visual magnification of 80x. Finally, the rightmost picture of the Folger's coffee can used both the 6mm eyepiece and the Tri-Mag barlow for a visual magnification of 498x.


Click an image below to see it at full size!


More to follow,
NightRunner!