Celestron PowerTank Glow 5000 – a red flashlight is also essential if you’re using star charts and books as it will protect your night vision. The PowerTank has three brightness levels and a USB port to charge your smartphone or tablet. Some observers ditch these mounts to convert their tabledobs to grab-n-go. At one point, Vixen sold this telescope tube on their Vixen Porta mount, and that solution worked fine, and it had better, given the price tag. Using the included 20 mm eyepiece, you get 20X and approximately a 2-degree field of view. This combination will work well for stars hoping to find a wide range of targets. The included 10 mm eyepiece provides a 40X image and about 1-degree field of view. This will work well for the Moon, Venus, and open clusters.

Lastly, although there’s no Moon filter included, the eyepieces are both threaded to allow a filter to be attached. Ease of UseYou could then replace your 25mm and 10mm eyepieces. A 25mm or 20mm Plossl, a 20mm or 15mm Goldline, would be a good cheap replacement. The 10mm can be replaced with a 9mm Goldline. A 10mm Plossl would have a slightly wider field of view than the Kellner, but it would have shorter eye relief, so it’d be less comfortable to use. Due to the wave nature of light, all else being equal, the telescope with the largest aperture has the highest resolution, so you can reach higher magnifications. The SkyScanner 100 comes with two eyepieces: 20mm and 10mm Kellners, yielding 20x and 40x, respectively. They are good matches for the scope, though an aftermarket 6mm “goldline” eyepieceor Barlow lenswould allow you to get higher magnification and thus obtain the best planetary views possible with the scope. If you have a flexible budget, consider the Zhumell Z114, SkyWatcher Heritage 130P Tabletop Dobsonian (same as AWB OneSky 5”) or the StarBlast 4.5” TableTop Dobsonian. The StarMax 90mm is an option for higher magnification viewing.

Of course, the test of any telescope is how well it performs under a clear sky. Since most users of a small telescope don’t typically live under the dark skies of a rural location, the Zhumell Z100 was tested under suburban skies with a limiting magnitude of about 4. The XT6 weighs 34 lbs fully assembled, making it actually the lightest of the commercial 6″ Dobsonian telescopes. If shaving off six pounds over the skywatcher or four pounds over the DT6 makes a difference to you, consider the SkyQuest XT6. Just be careful you don’t bang the focuser on the door when you’re taking the telescope outside. If the focuser were positioned at 45 degrees from the top of the tube, then it would be easy to use and look through from either a seated position or a standing position when pointed at any altitude. Many tabletop dobs mount the telescope in tube rings so that the telescope can be freely rotated within the tube rings to get whatever eyepiece position is needed at any time, but this is not an option for the SkyScanner.That is, a larger aperture telescope typically shows images that are simply much more spectacular than what you can see at the same magnification with smaller telescopes. When sitting down, the correct height for the surface you place the Z130 on is almost exactly the same height as your seat, or maybe a little higher. In a pinch, I was able to (just barely) get it stable on a metal folding chair. But then you’re limited to half the sky. A flat, three-legged stool would work well. I have a short table that is the correct height, but it’s a nice piece of furniture that can’t be kept outside. So, unfortunately, that brings us to a problem with these scopes. Similarly, Cor Caroli (Alpha Canum Venaticorum) was also a clean (if tight) split with the 17mm eyepiece at 24x. Increasing the magnification to 40x with the 10mm made the pair more easily visible, with the primary appearing white and about twice as bright as the peachy-colored secondary. Nice to see you are thinking logically, so should she grow out of the interest you can sell it and recover some of the cost. The central obstruction of Newtonians slightly reduces their contrast and resolution compared to a refractor of the same size. (However, the cost of a good refractor is immense compared to a Dobsonian of the same size.)