
Orion Skyview Pro 100 EQ
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Orion SkyView Pro 100
100mm F/6 Refractor - MSRP $469
Bottom Line: If you're
buying a first scope and have $500 to play with, this is absolutely the
best use of your money. This package lets you start observing things
from day one and is an excellent base that will allow you to grow at
your own pace.
Introduction
So for 5 years I'd been without a telescope, and this year the itch got too strong to ignore, despite a generally tight financial situation I determined that Amy, my wonderful wife, and myself could spare around $500 for a Christmas present. This was back in October and it took me a month or so of reading reviews, making comparisons, and taking advice to settle on this relatively small scope, clocking in at $469 + $30 shipping and including a drive unit as a special offer. Enquiries were made, and the seller informed me that it would take 3-4 weeks to get one in stock and deliver it, I made sure to mention this to Amy, and left my web browser open at the product page to ensure that that hint had been communicated precisely. Always a sharp one Amy was quick on the uptake and 'secretly' ordered one, paying for it with our shared credit card just to ensure that I'd waste no time guessing what my Christmas present was when I could be spending that time working on the house....
Delivery
Instead of taking 3 weeks the the package arrived in 3 days, and was
too heavy for Amy to move out of sight, or wrap in Christmas paper, so
I practically tripped over the box when I got home that evening. It was
over a month until Christmas day.
Many telescope reviews mention the 'New Telescope Curse', well I
believe I have discovered a new aspect to this curse, while the new
scope sat in a box in the space where the Christmas tree would
ultimately be erected we had fantastic clear skies. I spent some nights
using binoculars to look around and imagine what I was missing as Mars
began to slip away from Earth for the next couple of years (returning
just in time for Christmas 2007), for good measure lady luck delivered
a city wide power cut that cleared the skies of the omnipresent light
pollution. The curse is a more devious creature than I had ever
imagined. At the end of
November I was partly responsible for a 'cat litter box accessibility
problem' that resulted in Amy having to clean a lot of bedding (I was
working at the time, otherwise I'd have dealt with it directly). By
good fortune FedEx had chosen that day to deliver Amy's present - a
Nikon Digital SLR - this was hastily wrapped and delivered as a peace
offering, so we decided that Christmas 2005 should come a little early.
The big box under the tree was opened and I got a first hand look at my
Christmas gift. Always resourceful, the curse reacted quickly and sent
down the first big
rainstorm of the season, stealing another victory in its eternal
struggle against new telescopes.
Assembly
Even with cloudy skies there's a lot to say about the scope, the main reason I picked the scope was because I knew that the mounting was highly critical to a telescope's performance, and getting the heavier mount required a trade off in aperture. The model I selected was the cheapest thing that Orion sold on the SkyView Pro mount, and represents excellent value for money if you add up the price of all the individual parts, in fact it represents the best deal in Orion's entire SVP range, as a Scotsman I found this simple mathematical argument highly persuasive. The telescope and mount were packaged together, with a double boxed exterior and with individual components in smaller boxes, the packaging is excellent and there appears to have been a bit of thought put into making it environmentally friendly. Understandable given that Orion is based in Santa Cruz. The bonus drive unit came in a separate box and delivered the one real Christmas surprise, the dealer had upgraded the single axis drive unit to a dual axis unit. Assembling the mount according to instructions was generally easy, I was surprised at how heavy it was, even before the scope and counterweights were added to the mix. I had some problems attaching the heavy duty spreader plate, when unfolding the legs (quite marvelous tubular steel legs I should point out) I can't seem to get them wide enough to accept the plate the correct way up, instead I found myself inserting it upside down so I could thread the nut on and tighten it enough and expand the legs. In theory I could then remove the plate and flip it the correct way up, however I'm generally happy with the inverted plate for the moment, both the supplied eyepieces fit in the tray with without any trouble, but bigger Eyepieces will require the plate to be setup correctly. |
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Other minor problems with the
mount includes the plastic end cap
which covers the axis tube where the Polar scope would be fitted, this
cap doesn't secure particularly well and gets knocked off practically
every time I pick the mount up to move it. The declination adjustment
screws are another part that doesn't really live up to the general
build quality, but since these are rarely adjusted it's not a huge
problem. Finally, while the plastic slow motion knobs are adequate for
the
task, they are definite candidates for replacement at the earliest
opportunity. The instructions for installing the drive were slightly less clear and I wasn't 100% sure I was doing everything right since it took several attempts to get the RA motor seated correctly in the housing with the gear teeth meshed. The Declination motor proved to be the biggest problem of the whole setup, despite my best efforts I couldn't get the motor to mount correctly, the gear teeth would not mesh at all, after attaching and removing the motor I determined that the problem was the plastic motor casing which featured a small channel for the wires that powered the motor. As supplied the motor had the channel in the wrong place and this was stopping the motor for seating correctly into the mount, the solution was relatively simple, I twisted the casing slowly until the channel was no longer an obstruction. I was somewhat concerned that if I had overdid this it would have stressed and possibly broken the wires, but everything worked fine in the end. Many people would not have been so bold as to attempt this fix, and others may have decided to return it for replacement, however since this was essentially a bonus item I felt that I had little to lose in the attempt. |
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The motor controller and power
supply don't integrate into the
package particularly well, the power pack takes 4 D cells and has a
strap which I've used to hang it on the declination screws, and that's
and that's an adequate, if a little hokey, solution. The controller
comes with an adhesive velcro strip that is supposed to be used to
stick the controller to one of the tripod legs. I found my one year old
daughter Skye had manged to remove this not even 24 hours after it was
fitted. So, the controller can sit in the spreader tray until I come up
with a better solution. I see this as a common complaint with the SVP
motor drives, but to be perfectly honest, I'd prefer they cut corners
with these kind of things rather than with something more essential to
the instrument's performance. The controller also has an annoying green LED which lights up when the drive is engaged, this is not the greatest thing for us astronomers who like to protect our night vision from such unwelcome intrusions, so I guess I'm not the only user who covers the light with electrical tape. When moving the tripod it's a good idea to unhook all the cables since there's too much potential for snagging them and damaging the system, or worse tripping over them while carrying sensitive optics.... Incidently, if you don't want to spend a small fortune on batteries it's a good idea to get a 6v 1000mA power supply to power the motors when you're within reach of a wall socket. |
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The telescope itself was bigger
than I'd imagined, it came already
secured to tube rings and a dovetail plate, and it was trivial to
secure it to the mount and balance it. In fact it was so light I found
it hard to mount it out of balance, which is probably a good sign as to
the stability of the mount, or perhaps it's a warning about that famous
sticky grease the manufacturers like to use. The package is completed
by a 1.25" Mirror Diagonal, a 6x30 straight through finder scope, a
collimation eyepiece
and a couple of Sirius Plössl Eyepieces. These are mid-range
components, superior to the accessories supplied with the lower end
scopes in Orion's range, and even similar scopes in this price range by
other manufacturers. The supplied eyepieces are 25mm and 10mm providing
magnifications and fields of 24x/2o
and 60x/0.75o, perfectly
adequate for starters, but
just begging for a barlow to be added to the equation in the future. Without clear skies to test the scope on I found myself staring at the scope, gazing down the tube, transfixed by the objective which was a thing of beauty, I'd never examined the lens on that famous 10" Grubb so I found this captivating. The objective is an achromatic doublet coated on all surfaces although it's not clear whether all of the surfaces are multi-coated, so I'm presuming that only the external optics get the multi-coat treatment.With the entire package assembled I finally felt that I'd made a good choice and left it near my kitchen window, just in case the clouds broke for a few minutes. I'd have to wait a couple of days and so November turned into December. |
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First Light
As luck would happen the clouds
broke into patches, giving me the
occasional chance to glimpse clear patches of sky for a few minutes.
Still viewing from my kitchen window, since I hadn't had time to carry
the completed scope downstairs, the first target was obvious as Orion
loomed large out of the window and the brand name made it feel more
appropriate than ever. Despite the light pollution the nebula was
clearer than I'd ever remembered it, most likely because I was 15
degrees further south than I was the last time I'd looked at it through
a small scope. Swapping in the 10mm eyepiece let me see 4 stars of the
trapezium, which was a pleasant surprise considering that I was
essentially grabbing glances in a somewhat turbulent Oakland sky. The
focuser needed quite a bit of work to get the best image possible, I
found myself tweaking it back and forth around the middle, there's
definitely a little bit of play in the focuser. I had been warned about
the famously sticky grease that these Chinese components ship with, but
it certainly never presented itself as a problem here or at any
other point while operating the mechanical components. I'm guessing
that it's
most likely a temperature dependent problem that really manifests
itself
on those cold frosty nights, those very same nights that have clear,
stable skies. The kind of nights we just don't get around here. |
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The stars in the frame weren't as sharp as I would have liked, as they moved in and out of focus it was clear that they were coming to focus off center, after consulting a website I guessed that this might be coma, but given the amount of turbulence I couldn't be sure. After a few minutes grabbing at gaps in the clouds my first light desires were satisfied and I resigned myself to waiting for some real observing weather.
I'd read about collimation, and
the trouble that reflector owners go
through to get a properly aligned mirror, as something of a beginner I
was comforted by the comments that suggested that collimation on a
refractor would be less of an issue. However, lacking clear skies a
decision was made to put the optics to the test using the collimation
eyepiece included in the package, I expected this test to be nothing
more than a
reassuring diversion. So I was quite taken aback when I clearly saw two
reflected circles which were a far cry from being concentric, on
actually looking at
the screws which hold the lens assembly in place the skew was apparent
to even cursory examination.The lens cell is adjustable using 3 pairs
of push-pull screws and Orion thoughtfully supplies a screwdriver
and allan keys for adjusting these, however I found that one of
the screws had been tightened beyond the capability of the supplied
screwdriver. All I could do with the tool was tear up the head and make
things more difficult for myself, a more substantial device was brought
into play to loosen the screw in question and complete the collimation. After aligning the optics I spent some time fixing everything else that needed tweaking, in particular, the finder scope uses two screws working against a spring for alignment, making light work of the procedure. I have memories of aligning the finder on an old 70mm Tasco refractor which used a total of 6 screws, the Orion makes that old scope seem like a bad dream when I think about the build quality,and ease of use. |
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Out Into The World
Mars was already falling behind so it was one of my primary targets for my next observing session, it was near the zenith so this required transferring the scope from my kitchen to my back yard, a non-trivial journey out of my front door and down the side of the house. This was relatively easy, the scope is pretty portable and can be moved without removing the tube or collapsing the legs, although I did have to be careful in negotiating some of my doorways. This package makes an excellent choice for those users seeking a grab n' go scope, and for car transport it breaks down and rebuilds quickly and easily - most of the other scopes I had considered would have more trouble fitting in my car (a 1999 Mustang Convertible), especially if I needed to bring Amy, Skye and a weekend's worth of luggage along for the trip.
On attempting to observe Mars I
encountered another couple of minor
problems, I'm sure you can tell from the pictures that the finder can
be somewhat awkward to use for targets near the zenith. I found myself
frequently rotating the eyepiece and diagonal to move it out of the way
to use the finder scope and then rotating it back to actually look at
the target, only to find I'd managed to knock the finder out of
alignment. I'm sure this is just because I'm out of practice with my
telescope contortions, but it does make me want to put a right angle
finder near the top of my accessory list. The more pressing problem is
that when rotating the mount I found the Declination drive motor was
bumping into the RA knob, I switched the slow motion knob to the other
side, but even then it was still possible to run the motor into the
bare drive shaft. I'm not sure whether the drive system would be
powerful enough to damage the Dec motor assembly from the pressure, or
burn out the motor due to it being stuck? Given that the motor doesn't drive the scope any faster than 8x sidereal the impact velocity works out to 1/25th of a millimeter per second (slower than even the most lethargic snail), it's not going to damage the motor assembly directly. If you were using the drive to track an object on the sky it has the effect of pitching the telescope up in the declination axis which might be bad if you're exposing an image at that time. Whatever happens it's the one bona fide design flaw in the mount that I have reservations about. I also tried rotating the telescope 180 degrees on the RA axis, putting the motor on top of the tube, this puts it well clear of the mount, but I found that it also made the tube unstable and if I left the brake off the weight of the motor wanted to flip the tube until the motor was on the bottom again. I should point out that personally I don't have huge grounds for complaint since the Dec motor was essentially a bonus, but if I'd paid for it I might be a little more concerned. |
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After lining up Mars and actually getting a look this was the first
object that clearly showed a violet halo due to chromatic aberration
(Amy thought it looked pretty), it clearly visible at 60x but it
didn't distract from the target. I can't say for sure whether I saw any
real detail on the surface, the seeing was pretty turbulent, and I
attempted to get some video frames with a view to stacking, but the
martian disc wobbled too much to get anything definitive. Now that the
mount was properly on terra firma it was possible for me to
appreciate the stability of the mount which had been the major factor
in my selection of this scope. The tube was held steady against the
small amount of wind and when deliberately disturbed the damping time
was easily under a second, and for good measure I added a few pounds of
camera gear to the screw on the tube ring, the mount performed
admirably. It was at this point, however, that I realized that the Tube
had been mounted backwards in the tube rings, the mounting screw was on
the rear tube ring, this barely qualifies as a problem but it does make
me wonder once again about general quality control.
Venus was still in the sky and I had a go at this, again the chromatic
aberration was
plainly visible, in fact Venus was perhaps the only object I observed
where the blue halo was an inescapable feature, but otherwise the
planet resolved wonderfully and showed a sharply defined phase. The
dust cap supplied with the package allows you to mask down the
objective to a 60mm aperture, using this smaller aperture reduced the
halos to something more manageable,
although I'm sure there's an entire army of apochromat owners who'd be
less than satisfied with this.
But planets are not the forte of these short tube refractors, its
those wide angle views where the scope excells, M45 was also high in
the sky and seemed to be a good target, at
least after doing the finder scope limbo dance to locate it. The
cluster showed reasonably sharp star images over about 90% of the field
of view,
with some minor image degradation towards the edge, CA was apparent on
the brighter stars, but really with an f/6 refractor there's no getting
away from the blue meanies. I used to look at the Pleiades a lot with
that 70mm Tasco but the views provided by this scope seemed to bring
with them a new sense of clarity and crispness, maybe my memories
of
that old scope have blurred with age, but more likely the doubling of
my objective area and superior optics made the real improvement
Some effort was expended on aligning the mount so that the drive would
track correctly, one of the tripod legs does have a big 'N' that might
help some people or confuse them if they're in south of the equator, it
will accept a polar alignment scope, but that's an
optional extra that I've done without. Even if I had one it wouldn't do
me any good in my back yard since my house blocks line of sight to
Polaris, and indeed to most of the north sky. Instead I've been getting
alignment through the old fashioned method of observing stars and their
slow drift, the tripod leg locations have now been marked off on my
concrete patio, although there's still room for improvement. However
the drive
does have a fair amount of play in both axes and even with the best
alignment I could get there remained too much jitter for anything that
would qualify as long exposure photography, thankfully in this era
technology allows us to get a decent approximation by stacking many
short exposures. It'll satisfy my needs until I can save up enough
pennies for a mount with an integrated drive and PEC capabilities.
The mount also comes with adjustable setting circles which are
roughly 3 inches in diameter, the RA circle is has marking every 10
minutes and the Dec circle has marks every degree, with the 25mm
eyepiece and good mount alignment this should let you get your intended
target into view and allow you to make the final adjustments through
the eyepiece. I located a couple of Messier objects this way, just to
prove to myself that it was possible, but the amount of work required
for the initial alignment means that star hopping still retains a great
appeal for casual observing sessions. Orion is now selling an
Intelliscope upgrade for the SkyView Pro mount, it's not a Go-To system
by any means - slewing to a target at the drive's top speed could take
over an hour at 8x sidereal, instead its their 'user driven go-to'
which gives the operator directional queues to help them home in on the
desired target. It's certainly an interesting feature as a potential
upgrade, although the only reviews I've read so far are for the
intelliscope on Orion's dobsons.
Early Next Morning
Skye demanded attention when she woke up at some unreasonable hour
and after calming her and putting her back to sleep I checked on the
other sky and found that it too had settled somewhat and presented me
with some new targets. Saturn was high in the sky and looked great,
with the more stable air I tried to deploy the video camera only to
have it shut of with a dew warning. Curses! foiled again, oh well, I'll
have plenty more chances in the next couple of months. Still the view
through the eyepiece was just reward for my endeavors with the young
un'. Jupiter had risen and was high enough to be well worth a look, the
disc showed at least one pair of cloud bands north and south of the
equator and there were a few points of light where I expected to see
the Galilean satellites. With its short focal length it's performance
on planets isn't going to set the world on fire, but it's definitely
better than I'd imagined.
Although lacking an eyepiece of sufficient power to perform a real
star test I made my best efforts to ascertain the optical performance
in the stable air, certainly I couldn't detect any optical defects at
60x, other than the obvious chromatic aberration, generally the
observations confirmed my earlier impressions. Stars near the middle of
the field came in and out of focus with no hint of asymmetry or spokes,
in particular
without that coma that had been so obvious before my epic battle with
that stubborn collimation screw. Further testing will need higher
magnifications, so instead I headed back to deep sky territory while
waiting for Mercury to rise and bring the pre-dawn glow to the sky, I
felt quite proud to have observed the 5 classical planets over the
course of a single night. This little scope had but one more task ahead
of it before I could consider it broken in......
Observing the Moon
Once the Moon returned the telescope treated me to some fabulous
views, the instrument really excels at providing views of the lunar
surface, I've seen all these craters before in images, and in my old
Tasco, but I never did get the chance to point that magnificent Grubb
at our nearest neighbor, no doubt that massive lens would have
gathered too much light and dazzled away any detail. Even on this small
scope masking down the objective delivers great gains in terms of
viewing comfort and of course it virtually eliminates the blue halos
making for practically colour free views of the lunar surface, even
along the lunar limb it's hard to detect any rogue colour escaping the
lunar surface into the blackness of space. I spent an awful lot of time
studying the craters along the terminator, the images are truly
magnificent with deep contrast and sharply defined features giving
observers plenty of opportunity for lunar exploration, the views
of the moon alone practically justify this scope
as a good investment.
A Great Investment For Dedicated Beginners
So here's why this scope is perfect for me, with a house and family my finances are generally tight, so I could budget about $500 as a one time expense and maybe look forward to smaller expenditures at random times in the future. This package represents an excellent base with plenty of scope for upgrades (no pun intended), but nothing in the package will find itself rendered redundant at any foreseeable point in the future. The SkyView Pro mount and drive is solid enough to use for some basic astrophotography and the scope is big enough to give new astronomers a big step up in what they can see while remaining sufficiently portable such that travelling to dark skies isn't a major operation. The base package is excellent value for money, especially when you compare it against the nearest equivalent packages from other manufacturers which frequently come with fewer accessories and lighter mounts. The tube has a 2" focuser even though all the supplied accessories are 1.25", it's great to have the possibility of acquiring the larger eyepieces. If I want a computer guided mount then that's a possibility with Orion's intelliscope upgrade kit, although it's not a complete go-to system it will make object location easier. And should I really feel the need for more aperture then I can just buy the tube and mounting hardware rather than buying a complete package, the mount will supposedly handle Orion's 8" newtonian OTA which gives a huge step up in light gathering for a relatively small outlay.
There are some people that might advocate big dobsons for beginners, that wouldn't be me.
Things I Like
- Mount shows excellent stability
- Generally great build quality
- Portable
- Decent quality optics all round
- Plenty of upgrade potential
- Great value ($469) - even better if you get the free drive.
Things I Don't Like
- Dec Drive can crash into the mount
- Controller and power pack don't have a real home
- Plastic Slow-Mo knobs aren't up to the otherwise high build quality.
- Some chromatic aberration (if this is a problem save your pennies for something else)
My Shopping List
- The Essentials
- Barlow Lens to extend the range of the supplied eyepieces.
- Right angle finder to help reduce neck ache.
- Replacement Slow Mo knobs since the plastic ones beg to be
replaced.
- A can of decent grease, a lot of people have advised that tearing down and rebuilding the mount is a good idea.
- 2" Mirror Diagonal, so I can start collecting 2" eyepieces.
- Polar Alignment Scope, for when I take the scope on the road.
- Nice to have, Someday
- Intelliscope upgrade Kit.
- Replacement Focuser, there are several to choose from.
- Bigger Tube with more aperture, longer focal length, or both...... but that's another review.
Thanks to Amy for buying the telescope and bringing Christmas early.
Thanks to Armagh Observatory for letting me use the photo of the Grubb 10" for this article.
Scott Manley
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