Skywatcher Explorer 130 PDS.

After much waiting I was finally able to purchase a Newtonian OTA to try imaging with.

I purchased the Skywatcher Explorer 130 PDS from first light optics in the UK as this falls within my restricted budget.
FLO and DHL were outstanding and from me making the online purchase on a Monday morning at 10AM, I had it in my hands at work on Friday morning!
That was super quick from the UK then through customs and delivered to me, outstanding service and I will happily deal with FLO again.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/reflectors/skywatcher-explorer-130p-ds-ota.html

This is a great little scope and I was impressed with the first light both visually and with astrophotography.
The scope comes bundled with a 2" 28mm eyepiece along with a few other accessories for the 1.25 adapter and that screws apart and screws straight onto the T-ring adapter on the camera, makes attaching the camera a breeze and is one of the reasons I like the Skywatcher range, my 102 does the same.

The field of view is pretty good and it easily fits IC 26029(Southern Pleiades) in the FOV with a 25mm EP inserted.
The supplied 2" 28mm does not perform well in the fast scope but does heaps better in the bigger 8" dob.
The finder is a standard 6 X 30 and gets the job done for alignment purposes.

I now have a rather large learning curve ahead of me when it comes to using a newt for imaging.
I have taken a few test images to see what the scope can do.
First thing I noticed is that once the light frames are stacked it is a much darker final image that I can stretch WAY further than similar images from the refractor before noise shows up.
The stars do distort around the edges, but nothing too serious. the focus is off and it seems the collimation could use a tweak judging by the spikes and diffraction patterns around the brightest stars.
The Southern Pleiades image below illustrates this well.

So without much more ado here are some images.

Both scopes outside, the big dob on the left and "Mini me" on the right sitting atop my skywatcher alt/az goto mount.

Then a few images from the scope with my Canon 1200D DSLR.

First up is NGC 104.

Then we have NGC 5139

These are the Southern Pleiades.

And since all these images were captured under a near full moon here she is too.

Thanks for reading and clear skies friends!