Телескоп SkyWatcher 406/1800 Flex 16" GoTo

A large aperture for a little money - that was always the main idea when acquiring a Dobsonian telescope. With their BlackDiamond Dobsonian, Sky-Watcher have created a classic with a new slant. The new, patented, a novel patented sliding rod design makes it is particularly easy to transport. Another advantage of this is that it allows the focus point to be flexibly shifted by sliding the rods further in or out.

Not being able to track objects has always been a problem. Hardly was an object positioned, than it was already drifting out of the eyepiece's field of view. Dobsonians were therefore preferentially used for deep sky observing at low magnifications. With BlackDiamond Autotracking and BlackDiamond GoTo Dobsonians, Sky-Watcher has now created a new option: a series featuring automatic tracking. Tiresome guiding by hand is no longer necessary. The device is fully capable, even when planetary observing at high magnification.

The telescope and mount:

This BlackDiamond truss tube Dobsonian has a 16 inch parabolic mirror. A 16 inch telescope provides enormous light gathering capacity but is still transportable. A 16 incher offers 31% more light compared to a 14-incher. This is immediately apparent when first looking through the eyepiece. Interesting things, beyond the usual range of objects, can be discovered with such an instrument. With good seeing, almost all of the NGC catalogue objects are visible. An aperture ratio of f4.4 and a finely adjustable 2 inch focuser make this telescope suitable for the photography of the brighter objects. A large amount of detail can be seen on planets under good seeing conditions. Saturn shows half a dozen of its moons as well as the gaps in the rings.

The built-in tracking capability allows the photography of brighter objects. Unlike many standard Newtonians, there is no problem with the focus position with Sky-Watcher truss tube Dobsonians. The position of focus can be flexibly adapted. The large light gathering power opens up interesting options at lunar eclipses and for planetary astrophotography. The powerful servo-motors on both axes can be controlled is via the hand box and can move the telescope at a range of different speeds.

The GoTo version of the Sky-Watcher Dobsonian comes with a SynScan control. The hand box is used to select any object from the pre-programmed database of 42,900 objects and the telescope then slews to this fully automatically.

Additional features included with the Dobsonian GoTo version:

• high performance 12V servo motors on both axes
• adjustable speed of 1X, 4X, 8X, 32X, 64X or 800X
• easily operated SynScan hand box for rapidly finding thousands of astronomical objects