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Astro Sky 16" f/4.5 Dobsonian Reviewed

Astro-Sky-16-Dobsonian.jpg

Kurtis Gothreaux writing over at Astromart has posted his review of the Astro Sky 16" f/4.5 Dobsonian telescope. 'I brought the scope back home and eagerly awaited a clear night to set the scope up on my back patio for first light to see how my scope would perform. Several nights later a clear sky broke and I set the scope up. I have moderately light polluted skies in my backyard and wasn't really expecting to see a whole lot and was more just wanting to test the movements and mechanics of the scope and try out the Sky Commander. My main purpose of this scope is for dark sky star parties which I try to attend several a year. Well, my first views through the scope really wowed me. I was immediately amazed at how bright and crisp the stars were with my 27mm Televue Panoptic in the focuser. Not even using the Sky Commander yet I swung the scope to M31 to just see what it would look like.

The telescope moved effortlessly and when I saw M31 from my backyard in this scope, and with what I saw, I knew I had a winner. M31 was surprisingly large and bright. I could just start to make out the dust lane. I couldn't wait to see what I would see under dark skies. Next, after familiarizing with the Sky Commander manual I went to work on learning Sky Commander. I must say the Sky Commander was a pleasure to use and worked flawlessly. Put in the date, catch two alignment stars and you are off the to races. I owe the workings of the Sky Commander to the installation job James did on it. I know the encoders have to be square on the axes and things of that nature for the DSC to operate properly. Evidently James knew what he was doing. I went on to use Sky Commander to locate other objects I would have had a hard time locating from scratch in my back yard and they were all within the field of view of my eyepieces. I closed down the evening looking forward to an upcoming dark sky star party in several weeks.'

Read: Astro Sky 16" f/4.5 Dobsonian - Astromart

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Comments

Kurtis also submitted this review on Cloudy Nights
Astro Sky 16" f/4.5 Dobsonian

Thanks for your correction of the oversight.

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