hi this is Graham from Jenham's Astro I've had this Skymax 127 for a couple of
months now this video is to give you some initial feedback on my experiences
with using the scope now here in the UK is the middle of summer
so the sky isn't dark and certainly in lights are sure there are limited
opportunities to give the scope a proper test but basically what I've done is
pulled together some video of some observations of the moon and of Jupiter
so that we can get a first idea of the quality of the scope so this is a setup
I've got the the 127 on top of an Heq5 Pro equatorial mount and as you can see
the targets were relatively low in the sky when I was taking the video coming
around the back of the scope we can see that I'm using a 2 x barlow my trusty
Televue barlow and I'm using an Zwo camera which is an ASI 120 color camera
so the first target was Copernicus very prominent crater this is on day 11 of
the lunar cycle and I was quite happy that it could achieve a good focus with
a bit of trial and error and quite a good image of the crater and the
adjacent landscape and after that what I've done is I've taken the video
through registers taken the best 50% of the frames and this is the result
okay moving on to the second target is the crater proper switch is on the edge
of the Mare Crisium and prominent ray network bright rays emanating from this
crater and once again took the video through registers half the frames and a
little bit of wavelet sharpening and that's the result now we're on to the
Bay of rainbows one of my favorite targets little bit lower light levels
this time but I think you can get a reasonable idea that you get nice clear
view of the of the target close to the Terminator this time and then same again
best 348 frames and roughly half the frames this time and giving a nice clear
image so this compares quite well to the C90 that I've been using slightly
better with this scope and then finally moving on to the crater Plato easy to
find just along a little way from the Bay of rainbows and also you can see the
alpine valley off to the side so finally the result looking at Registax
quite happy with that only 280 frames this time but it's shown the crater very
well and also you can see the the valley over there on the right of frame okay so
moving on to Jupiter so this is the video taken straight from the camera you
can see the planet with the main equatorial bounds and the Great Red Spot
you can also see one of the Galilean moons to the left of the planet and
pretty good seeing this night even though tube 2 is quite low in the sky
and then as before taking the video through registers this time it took
about a thousand frames and played around with wavelets and the usual trial
and error fashion and quite happy with that
now finally just something little bit different people sometimes ask me what
can you actually see through the scope by looking through the eyepiece so this
time I put my iphone over the top of the standard 25 millimeter eyepiece and used
a Night cap Pro app it's not another night you can see for the Galilean moons
at this stage the obviously the planet itself is overexposed but if we play
around with the app we can do something about that we can just reduce the
exposure as we do that the moon start to disappear this gives you a bit of an
idea of what you can see just visually looking over the eyepiece perhaps with a
barlow or using the high-powered standard eyepiece so what are my
impressions of the sky watchers Skymax 127 well generally I think the initial
use has been quite positive I've been quite happy with the with the shots that
I've got three points not in any particular order the three things I've
noted and using the scope firstly the focus knob is is relatively stiff now if
you're trying to do fine focus on planet that could be an issue if you've got a
lightweight mount using the scope on it on an Heq5 pros no problem at all
because we don't really doesn't really induce any great vibration but but it
might be something you notice on my lightweight mount the red dot finder you
need to play around a little bit to get it precisely aligned with the main
optical tube assembly you might have to shim the bracket here just to get it to
point exactly lined up with the main scope again easy to achieve not a real
problem I guess the main thing to know is that even though I've titled this
video skymax 127 it isn't obviously a telescope that is quite what it appears
in terms of aperture so I've repeated the operating aperture test that I did
on the Skymax 150 some time ago and it reveals that this 127 millimeter
scope is operating with an aperture of 119 millimeters now that seems to tally
with reports from other users and I guess it's a feature of the design
either under size mirror or maybe some baffling or some certainly some stops
somewhere in the system means that you're not actually getting a full five
inch aperture scope and I think everybody knows that's the case for
these designs of MaK and perhaps skywatcher would be better off marketing it
more accurately maybe we'd accept this as a skymax 120 but in reality
doesn't make a difference not really but it is a little bit of bugbear that these
particular scopes don't operate at the full advertised aperture okay so having
said that nothing really negative to report aside from that I'm looking
forward to using the scope a bit more as the night's get darker so far very
encouraging and I'll continue to give feedback when I've had a look at a few
more astro objects okay thanks for watching