Sky-Watcher's 10″ Collapsible Dobsonian: The Sweet-Spot for Aperture and Value!
This is a big, friendly horse of a telescope you can ride off into the sunset with, and then thrill to well resolved celestial views when twilight fades. The SW 10″ DOB is an very satisfying telescope to own, an instrument that will provide a lifetime of continuing exploration of the heavens. This telescope will hit the sweet-spot for many amateurs, providing all the capability and value you are seeking in a large aperture telescope. Sky-Watcher’s revolutionary truss-support concept allows the optical tube’s front and back cells to collapse together, aligning on the truss support rods which can then be locked down for easy and secure telescope transport. This one piece, low-hassle OTA design is mechanically simple and results in a large aperture telescope that can be reasonably handled and transported by one individual. This innovation gives Sky-Watcher users tremendous functional ease-of-transportability.
Viewing with the SW 10″—Size Does Matter
In viewing deep-space, aperture matters—big time! With this telescope you have tremendous light gathering power. Prominent deep-space objects seen well in an 8″ SW DOB, such as diffuse emission nebulae in the summer sky like the Lagoon (M8), Trifid (M20), and Swan (M17); the stunning globular star clusters M13 and M92 in Constellation Hercules; the awesome winter sky’s Great Orion Nebula (M42) in Constellation Orion, and our enormous local galaxy group companion the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) in Constellation Andromeda, to name a very few, will appear more spectacular, brilliant, and wider in extension in a SW 10″ DOB.
Many challenging objects for an 8″ aperture now come into their own with the SW 10″ DOB: the planetary nebula the Crab (M1), a supernova remnant, requires a 10″ aperture to truly begin to appreciate the several subtle, gaseous filamentary structures. M33 the spiral galaxy in Constellation Triangulum exhibits significantly more open arm structure. The Rosette Nebula in Monoceros begins to show the discernable pattern of a blooming rose. M51, the fascinating spiral Whirlpool Galaxy, displays remarkable greater structural detail in a 10″ aperture vs. 8″ diameter size telescope.
There is no question the incremental resolving power of a 10-inch aperture is visually impressive when compared to an 8-inch. Therefore, it is no wonder then that the 10″ aperture is overtaking the 8″ as the serious amateur astronomer’s aperture of choice in a Dobsonian telescope. Sky-Watcher’s compact, collapsible optical tube design makes the decision to step up in aperture to a 10″ even easier.
- 10″ (254 mm) Dobsonian-style Newtonian
- 1200 mm focal length (f/5)
- 2″ Crayford-style focuser with 1.25″ adapter
- 4-element Plössl 25 mm and 10 mm 1.25″ eyepieces
- 8×50 right angle erect-image finderscope
- Solid rocker-mount with Teflon bearings and tension clutch for altitude
- Teflon bearing for azimuth
- Eyepiece height at zenith: 48”