Sky-Watcher Heritage 150P
Flextube Dobsonian
A simple to set up, portable scope that delivers a decent range of views
ince the introduction of the Heritage 76 in 2009, Sky-Watcher’s tabletop Dobsonian telescopes have offered an affordable way for anyone to explore the wonders of the Universe. The Heritage 150P Flextube has now been added to the series, to deliver a greater light-gathering capacity than the previous largest in the range, the Heritage 130 – increasing it by 33 per cent.
The Heritage 150P comes preassembled in an attractive presentation box, with smaller boxes for the eyepieces and red dot finder. The latter needs a screwdriver to attach it to the telescope, but once that’s done there’s no need to take it off again. The Flextube design allows the front end of the telescope, to extend on two struts. Then, after use, the front end neatly slides back into the lower half of the tube, making it very compact and convenient to store.
The front end of the telescope houses the secondary mirror, a helical focuser and a place to attach the finderscope. There’s also a dust cap to protect the scope’s optics. Two eyepieces are
Sprovided, 25mm and 10mm, giving magnifications of 30x and 75x respectively. The red dot finder works well and has adjustable brightness, a useful feature which means it doesn’t overpower the view at the lowest setting.
Adjusts with ease
The mount is a single-arm tabletop Dobsonian and is very easy to operate, with free movement on both the azimuth and altitude axis. The altitude axis is tensioned using a large knob, so you can balance the tube assembly and give enough free movement to adjust the tube with just your finger.
The tube is attached by a Vixen-style clamp and there’s enough length on the mounting bar to achieve good balance. One minor niggle with is that you can’t rotate the tube to position the focuser and eyepiece into a better position. Unless you use a low table, you may find you have to stretch over the telescope to reach the eyepiece.
We took a tour of the best summer Milky Way targets, beginning low down in the northeast with