First Clear Skies with New Skywatcher TelescopeI can finally use my new Skywatcher telescope that I had for Christmas, as tonight I finally had clear skies! I have the Explorer 200 model which is a 200mm Newtonian reflector.
It took a while to get my new Skywatcher Explorer 200 telescope assembled being that this is the first time, and I was doing it in the dark. I did not perform any polar alignments, just roughly pointed it north. I started by looking at the Moon, M45 Pleiades and M42 in Orion, then wandering around the sky I found an interesting star cluster. Started taking pictures, but the moon was all I was able to capture. The others were unfocused or had large blurry lines. This was not helped by the fact I was hand-holding the camera to the eyepiece.
Later on, Saturn had risen into view and I was able to see it for the first time! It was amazing how clear it was, not a case of there's something there and if I stretch my imagination you could call it Saturn, you can see Saturn, with its rings and moons! Unfortunately, the batteries in the camera died before I could take any pictures.
Here are a few photos that I did manage to take by holding my camera up to the eyepiece of my Skywatcher telescope.
