Sky-Watcher 25th Anniversary Limited-Edition SkyMax 127 Virtuoso GTI
$775.00

A complete and capable tabletop telescope.

One of the biggest problems with telescope ownership is many people often get a scope that is suitably impressive and capable but takes a bit of time to setup for use. The best telescope you have is the one you actually use right?

I have a pretty impressive collection of telescopes myself, various optical designs, several different mounts, some even small, portable, and easy to setup. Yet, I will very often find myself taking out the trash or coming home from an evening engagement and noticing that the sky is clearer than I expected it to be that night. The Moon/Jupiter/Saturn/etc. looks fantastic tonight, it’s too bad I don’t have scope setup and ready to go. This happens more often than it should. Years ago, I bought a simple small tabletop Dobsonian, mostly for my children at the time, but unlike my current 14” dob, it didn’t track, didn’t have GOTO, and was unsuitable for astrophotography. I ended up giving it to my daughter when she got married and moved out. Occasionally, when my favorite visual target the Moon surprises me one night, I’ve missed that little scope. Well, I used to.

For Sky-Watcher’s 25 anniversary, they have released a limited number of SkyMax 127 telescopes with the Virtuoso GTI mount. They sent me one for review, and it’s a keeper. The included optic is a 127mm Mak-Cassegrain with a focal length of 1,500mm and a focal ratio of f/11.8. I love the Mak-Cass design and own the larger 180mm version myself. The optical design has many advantages for visual astronomy as well as astrophotography. In the many years I’ve had the larger one and transported it around, I’ve only had to tweak the collimation one time, and the truth is, I probably should have left it alone. It’s not quite as good as a refractor (sorry, I’m a bit of a refactor fanatic), but it’s close in terms of sharpness and contrast, it’s far more portable and provides superior views of the Moon and planets to a Schmidt Cassegrain for its size. For the anniversary edition, the 127 OTA has a special insignia on it and each one is numbered as well. Fancy.

Although, the Virtuoso GTI is a tabletop mount, it also has a 3/8” threaded block on the bottom for mounting on a tripod if you want it elevated. I found this to be a surprisingly useful feature. The whole thing weighs just 21 pounds too. The Virtuoso is an Alt-Az mount with a Vixen style dovetail clamp. You could easily remove the SkyMax OTA and put on another telescope as long as it was short and lightweight (10 pounds or less). A small refractor for example would do nicely here. The GTI creates its own WIFI hotspot and can be controlled with Sky-Watcher’s free SynScan app, which is available for both iOS and Android mobile devices. If you have or purchase separately a SynScan hand controller, there is also a port for that as well. I do confess, I sometimes prefer to have that tactile feel of real buttons while I float above the Moon with my eye glued to the eyepiece, and I’m pleased this scope offers that option.

It’s a tracking mount, which means it needs power. There’s the ubiquitous 2.1mm power port for a 12v power supply, or you can add eight AA batteries for a more cord free experience. I found alignment to be trivially simple. There are clutches on both axes you can loosen for easy OTA positioning. Just level the mount, point the OTA north, and connect with the SynScan app or hand controller. I most often use it for a single target opportunity, and the one-star alignment gets me close enough to the Moon for example that I can find and center it up well enough with the included 9×50 straight-through finder scope. Tracking is good, and there are options for setting both lunar and solar tracking rates (be sure and use a FRONT MOUNTED SOLAR FILTER). I appreciated the 2” diagonal and back on the 127 SkyMax as I can use it with my entire eyepiece collection.

Some of my finer scopes I keep indoors, but I can’t just take them outside and use them on a spur because in Florida the optics will immediately gather condensation in the warm humid air outside after being in my air-conditioned home. This setup however, I keep in my shed and have been up and running and exploring the Moon in literally under 5 minutes. There is an included 28mm eyepiece in this package, but I also found the views are quite nice with my Takahashi and Brandon eyepieces, and when seeing conditions are good, I’ve pushed the magnification up to over 300x. Yes, I know that exceeds the maximum recommended for an optic this size, but your brain is an amazing image processing device too, and you’d be surprised what you can see sometimes.

Another reason I’m so fond of this setup is that there’s very limited sky from my back yard. When the Moon is behind the neighbors’ trees, I can pop this on a tripod in my driveway, spend a few minutes lost in the Moon’s terrain, and then put it away quickly before bed. I can even extend setup time to a whopping 10 minutes<g>, by grabbing my laptop and a high-speed camera to do some lucky imaging since it’s a tracking mount.

I really have no critique of this package. It’s small, light, fast to setup, and it’s bringing me back to my favorite target the Moon when the opportunity strikes. Sure, I can do a little better with one of my larger scopes, but “more frequent” is also a pretty compelling feature! It’s also a great scope for the planets, and brighter deep sky objects, but for me it’s going to primarily be my “Moon Ship”. I name all my scopes, and this one I’ve christened as “Artemis”. You can probably guess why.

Richard S. Wright Jr. does not have more telescopes than he needs, no matter what his friends and family says. He also does not have too many books on the Moon, and is always looking for more at used book stores.