Sky-Watcher Explorer-130PS telescope and AZ-EQ Avant mount

Begin your astronomy adventure with this portable and friendly partner

The continuing problem of light pollution means a telescope that can be easily transported to dark-sky sites instantly has great appeal. And that’s exactly the sort of telescope Sky-Watcher’s new Explorer130PS is intended to be. The telescope and its AZ-EQ Avant mount are a compact and light package but the whole setup has also been designed with beginners in mind. Assembly and operation are simple and user friendly in the hopes of providing a welcoming introduction to observing the night sky.

It uses a Newtonian reflector design that employs a parabolic primary mirror to collect and focus the light, and a flat secondary mirror to reflect it to the eyepiece. This design requires collimation to align the two mirrors accurately with one another and the eyepiece. But, to make life easier for beginners, a large chunk of this potentially perplexing process has been removed. The telescope has a fixed mirror cell for the primary mirror, which is collimated at the factory so it’ll only require occasional adjustment to the secondary mirror, for which a suitable Allen key is supplied. Upon delivery, the review telescope was in excellent collimation and produced well-formed stars during this test – it really did work well straight out of the box.

Stable and smooth

The mount is just as important as the telescope and Sky-Watcher supplied the new, dual-mode AZ-EQ Avant mount with the Explorer-130PS so we were keen to see how it performed. It didn’t disappoint, proving quick to assemble and providing a sturdy platform for the telescope. An accessory tray for your eyepieces also serves as a tripod-leg tensioner to help stabilise the setup.

Adjustments in both altazimuth (AZ) and equatorial (EQ) modes are smooth and it’s easy to keep objects centred in the field of view. In EQ mode, the altitude adjustment and locking clamp are simple to use although, with no method of installing a polarscope, polar alignment consists

of sighting Polaris, the ‘North Star’, down the side of the optical tube with the counterbalance bar pointing downwards and towards the north. But this is more than adequate for general observing purposes. The Explorer-130PS also comes with a pier extension to keep the telescope from clipping the tripod legs while slewing and this got a lot of use throughout the review period.

The 130mm-aperture, steel optical tube is finished in a high-gloss black with a silver-flecked finish and is cradled in two substantial felt-lined tube rings, which are attached to a Vixen-style dovetail bar. Surprisingly, the dovetail bar feature isn’t used to attach the telescope to the mount. Instead, a 1/4in-20 bolt on the mount is screwed into a matching threaded hole in the base of the bar. In use, this proved to be more than adequate for the purpose and no slippage was experienced during our tests.

A rather basic, plastic, single-speed rack and pinion focuser completes the optical tube but despite some initial reservations we found this to be effective in use. With it we were able to achieve focus quickly and easily.

The supplied red dot finder is an excellent choice, especially for beginners, as it’s so easy and intuitive to use. We relied on it extensively for star hopping to various deep-sky objects.

Simple but effective

The telescope’s focal length of 650mm is a good compromise for observing a wide range of objects, including both Solar System and deep-sky targets. We enjoyed some excellent views of M27, the Dumbbell Nebula, and M15 in Pegasus very early in the evening, then the Pleiades and the Hyades star clusters and M42 later during the night. In both the 25mm and 10mm eyepieces the waxing gibbous Moon after Christmas was a wonderful sight through this telescope and would easily produce that wow factor for a beginner.

We really liked this scope and mount package. It’s simple to assemble, easy to use and gives good views of some of the most popular targets. The mount is very well thought out, light yet sturdy and the complete setup is very appealing.