hi this is Graham from Jenham's Astro this is the second video in a series
about an affordable first telescope it's sold as the Sky Watcher heritage 130 in
the UK and a very similar scope is sold as the AWB Onesky in the US it costs
around one hundred and forty pounds or $200 in the first video we unboxed the
scope and today we'll review how well it performs under the night sky from the
perspective of a new astronomer okay I've chosen to assess the scope
against the series of criteria so let's take a look it's very easy to carry this
six kilo scope around you can store the scope and extend it and then move it
around to the best spot using this carrying handle you can even move it
during an observing session if your house or tree is blocking your view so
here's my kit list I've got the scope I've got the eyepieces
I've got my phone with a sky guide app and a red torch and that's it this scope
is truly grab-and-go it scores 10 out of 10 for portability
now you can use this telescope with it sitting on a table or you can use it
with it on the ground now either way you've got a position the scope so that
you can look through the red dot finder and the eyepiece so typically you're
pointing the telescope whilst looking to point the tube using the red dot finder
and then when you think they're pointing in the right direction you move to the
eyepiece now this is fine it just takes a little bit of practice I find if the
telescopes on the ground during the night you've got to make sure
you don't shove the telescope a little bit when you go between the red dot
finder position and the eyepiece but that's fine it just takes a little bit
of practice now the 25 eyepiece has is to say the lower power
eyepiece I find it very comfortable to use as someone who wears glasses sometimes
you can get eyepieces that you can't get to a position where you get a
comfortable image but it's not the case with this one the 25 gives you a very
comfortable field of view the 10 millimeter focal length eyepiece which
gives a higher magnification of 65 with this scope is slightly less comfortable
and that's typical it's always the case that a lower power eyepiece is going to
be slightly more comfortable to use so in terms of comfort and ease of use I'd
say that this telescope scores 8 out of 10
one of the things that people new to astronomy worry about is whether they're
going to be able to find objects with their telescope now for this money you
don't get a go-to database that points the telescope's at objects for you so
you'll have to learn some basic knowledge of the Stars now that's okay
that's half the fun of astronomy besides that I suggest you download a good sky
app onto your phone such as sky guide and that will really help you to find
your way around the night sky now in the first video we saw the red dot finder
and we saw that if it's lined up well the telescope tube and you only need to
do that once then it should help you to point the tube and the telescope
accurately a given place in the night sky now say that this red dot finder
works very well so if you've taken the time to make that alignment then the
object you're seeking should be within the field of view of the eyepiece
especially if you start using the lower power eyepiece that's to say the one
labeled 25 and just to illustrate that point if we look here at the online
website "Astronomy Tools" you can type in the details of this 130 millimeter
telescope and you can see the relative field of view that you're going to get
with a 25 millimeter eyepiece here that's the green circle and then with
the 10 millimeter eyepiece that's the purple circle so this just shows you
that when you're first looking for an object it's going to be much easier to
use that lower power eyepiece because it just gives you a much bigger field of
view so overall if you've followed this advice for using the right eye piece and
for lining up the red dot finder I'll give this telescope 7 out of 10 for
object location
so what sort of views can you get well a couple of words of warning to start with
if you're new to astronomy is important to recognize that the views you'll see
through a 200-dollar scope will not be as good as the images from the Hubble
Space Telescope many faint and fuzzy objects like galaxies and nebulae are
still faint and fuzzy even in a $2,000 scope it is a big universe after all
secondly any telescope should be well collimated the optics should be in good
mechanical alignment with each other in order to get the best performance the
good news is that if you remember these two points there are many many objects
in the night sky that look amazing with a telescope of this size now I've looked
at a range of these to give you some impression of what you might be able to
see with this 130 millimeter telescope
so looking at the constellation of Orion over here on the left there's an image I
took with a 50 millimeter lens on a digital SLR and you can see it's quite a
well-known constellation during the winter and the three stars of the belt
are here in the middle now underneath we can make it eyes not quite as obvious as
it shows in this in this picture here but with your naked eye you can see
something fuzzy in this area here which is called Orion's sword now if we zoom
in a little bit and get a slightly clearer view of that part of the
constellation and there we go and this is what's known as the Ron nebula
Messier 42 is one of the brightest deep sky objects that you can see now over
here on the right what I've done here is I've just placed my smartphone over the
eyepiece of heritage 130 and I've just taken a very quick shot but the idea
here is to give you an idea of the field of view this is with a 25 millimeter
eyepiece and it also shows you that you will be able to detect with this
telescope you'd be able to detect some of the nebulosity the fuzziness if you
like of this nebula it'll look a little bit better than this but hopefully it
gives you some idea of the sorts of field with you you'll get with this
telescope
okay so moving on to another object here on the left is another wide field view
of the winter sky and down here is the constellation of Orion that we just
looked at with the Orion Nebula just visible there now if we move further
north we come to the constellation of Taurus and within Taurus is a very
famous star cluster called the Seven Sisters it's just here and if i zoom in
a little bit so we get an idea of what it looks like now it's very bright
obvious to the naked eye hope in the sky at this time of year in the winter and
what I've done again is just show you roughly what you might see with the
Heritage 130 here on the right so again single shot over the eyepiece using a
smartphone gives you an idea that you can fit this star cluster into the field
of view of the telescope and with your eye you will see far more stars like
this the view will be better than this image portrays but it gives you an idea
and if we zoom back out again on the left so you can imagine yourself looking
up at night sky and this is the sort of field of view that you're looking at
with the low power eyepiece of the of the heritage telescope and now the moon
obviously going to be one of your first targets when you get a new telescope and
this is again another quick shot over an eyepiece the 25 millimeter
eyepiece and if we zoom in we can see I think some idea of the quality of the
optics of this telescope so not modified this picture in any way this is showing
you I say a very clear view of some of the craters along the Terminator here
which is the region between the light and the dark and really nice detail you
can obviously play around adjust the exposure perhaps get a slightly clearer
view of some of the other features but very pleased with this this is really
excellent quality and shows you why the moon and the bright planets are going to
be really good targets for this telescope so taking all that on board
I'd say with this 130 millimeter telescope the overall image quality is very good
I'm going to give it eight out of ten so what could be better well I've only got
a couple of minor gripes the open tube design of a flex tube telescope like
this can mean that stray light can disrupt your view you should always
position any scope away from distracting street lights but stray light can still
reach the mirrors through this gap now many people solve this issue using a
light shroud it can be a plastic tube or a piece of fabric that you wrap around
the tube it's a small problem that's easily solved secondly the the 10
millimeter eyepiece is only really okay it's pretty basic fare and it's not a
surprise because the telescope for this budget has is a pretty good package and
probably this is one of the the one of the weaker links that's okay again you
can always upgrade your eyepieces as your interest in astronomy grows as with
all reflectors sooner or later you'll need to master collimation which I've
mentioned on a couple of occasions but it's not a big issue and certainly with
this telescope it's relatively straightforward to
collimate and the instructions are in the manual now this particular one was
in quite good collimation when I received it so I've only had to do a
minor adjustment
so what's my conclusion well I like this scope a lot it reminds me how great it
is better get out under the stars within five minutes and I thoroughly recommend
it to someone who's new to astronomy is looking to buy themselves or a friend or
family member first telescope for 140 pounds or $200 I think it is fantastic
value and I score it nine out of ten overall so hope this video has been
useful if you'd like to see further videos of this telescope and other
astronomy videos please press the red subscribe button and subscribe to Jenham's Astro
thanks for watching
you