Telescope

Hi All. Well finally the person who told me he wanted my 1970`s Musicman amplifier has come good and purchased it. I was not in a hurry as they are sought after and was in no hurry to get a telescope until autumn. I got £500 for it so a good start to buy a telescope.

After a lot of reading & thinking I decided on a SCT with all its cool down & dew problems etc. At my local camera store the owner who I have known for over 20 years will let me have a new Celestron Nexstar 8SE for £950 which is way below normal retail prices. He did tell me Meade has sold its Celestron arm so Celestron prices will be going up!!
I was still undecided as for that money I could, when they come up, get a second hand 8SE with extra bits & pieces. Now I have decided finally to get the Celestron 800 CPC. Same tube but better fork mount so less vibration but also if you loosen the clutches you can use it manually, no setting up 2 star GoTo if you not want to. No intention to get into astrophotography but the base for doing it is there to start with, but never say never!!!
Just a matter of waiting till a second hand CPC 800 comes up for sale within reasonable distance to travel. There is one in Glasgow but a bit too far to travel from Wiltshire, just a matter of waiting.

 

Well I have changed my mind again, well not really. There is someone just 1 1/2 mile from where I live who has a skywatcher explorer 200p eq5 GoTo for sale. They are in the local astronomy club but have only used the set up a few times due to family commitments and basically just sitting in spare room doing nothing. I am going to look at it in the next few days to see if it looks as good condition as pictures. It only has the basic kit that came with scope so if I go for it I will have to buy a powertank or similar. I am sure I would need a 17 amp for motors & goto some research on what other people are using. Would also have to get a collimator to start with and work up from there.

There is bound to be the obligatory 2 weeks of cloud when you buy a scope so can start to learn how to collimate, set the eq5 up and then balancing the scope on mount. Tons of videos out there so just a matter of taking my time. I think the eq5 does not have a illuminated polar finder which from what I read can be a pain. You can buy them for around £20 so have to do a search on reviews for that one, also the best collimator for 200p.

Need to read up on aligning the mount to polar especially if you cannot see it. I have read that for observation only it does not have to be spot on. Again not read up on google but if I wanted to say for example go out & observe Jupiter how far I have to go in setting up the goto. A lot to read before I go & look at scope & mount.I will only be using scope for observing ,no astrophotography