WHAT TELESCOPE TO START WITH.

Agreed

I'm a Newtonian fan, Coolsox, and started with a old second hand 200 with a GGE mount but the mount died on me. But the "bug" got me and I bought a 250pds and a 300pds within months of each other and a NEQ6 to handle the 300pds. But I must admit I do like the convenience and handling of the SCT and have had some really great images with the 9.25. The Dobsonian is not something that floats my boat though even though manhandling a 300pds onto a NEQ6 is not the best experience in the world I still prefer an EQ mount...........but it's all down to personal tastes as with many things. You've got some great kit there, clear skies to you!!

 

Well, my experience with the new 9.25 Schmitt Cassegrain Telescope is working out just fine and I really like it. I'm also learning more and more about using SCT's and collimating it. With a Newtonian I use a Laser Collimator, a device called a Cheshire and also something called a cap to collimate it and get the images sharp. The one drawback with a Newtonian is that it will need re-collimating when you move it to put it onto the mount, but I find I enjoy that.
With a SCT the collimation will probably not need re-adjusting, if already spot on, for months or years, even when moved. But once I got more confident with the SCT I decided to try checking how well the factory setting of mine was. The standard method of doing that is to focus on a medium bright star with a fairly high magnification eyepiece......and take it out of focus!! What happens then is that there is a circular image of diffraction rings with a dark blob in the middle of it in your view. The dark blob is in fact the shadow of the secondary mirror at the front of the SCT. If it is out of collimation then the shadow will be off centre of the larger diffraction rings and so you tighten one of the three screws on the corrector plate at the front of the scope.
When I looked at mine the shadow was dead centre of the diffraction rings telling me the collimation was good. However, when looking at the rings and shadow I could see a tiny well defined white spot in the middle of the shadow. It was around 2am and I was tired so I looked again to check thinking it was my eyes but it was there for sure. So I was thinking because I'd taken it so out of focus it was either a problem, or the remnants of the out of focus star, or a star further back in the back focus. I discounted the last as the spot was always in the dead centre of the shadow even if I moved the scope. So being tired I gave up and the following day went on the Net and asked on an Astronomy site thinking I had a problem, Anyway, the response was "That's great, your scope is absolutely spot on". It appears that that tiny white spot in the centre of the shadow is a optical phenomenon called Poisson's Spot which is only visible when the Telescope is at maximum collimation!!! To have a telescope straight from the factory having maximum collimation is, according to the experts, very rare!! So I'm a happy astronomer and will leave collimating the scope alone!!