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A newbie's paralysis by overanalysis- Vixen 81S or Equinox 100ed? Night and Solar


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Hello all, TL:DR  what scope do you like better or have personally looked through?

A bit of an intro. I just got into the hobby this year. I have an Orion 8 inch Newtonian f4.9 reflector which is too big and cumbersome for the Skyview pro mount (eq5) which is rated for 20 lbs.

I hate the image shake. It is not a portable set up at all. It doesn't balance that great and viewing positions @ the eyepiece can be awkward which need to adjust the tube in the rings. Also, if it is windy, the tube is not usable, which sucks for my premium viewing site is a flat acreage (no observatory yet). It is okay for visual, but i bought the package for the mount primarily for solar viewing/imaging; but I enjoy the nighttime stuff as well. 

I just bought a modded ST80 which I will use with a quark chromosphere and a uv/ir filter. I am ordering the quark and/or the apo really soon. 

I want a premium ed/apo frac for a decent price- 120mm or less (for the quark chromo) that would not trouble my mount. 

The two I have narrowed it down to is the Vixen 81S or the Equinox 100mm. Both scopes scream quality.  Both are the same price. Different classes of scope (3 vs 4 inch apo)

I heard the Vixen is unrivaled in views in its class. I saw a youtube video of it looking at Jupiter with a 5x barlow and it blew my mind. Much better than my 8 inch newt!!!   It is portable, light. But it is the same aperture as my ST80. It will be better at night, maybe not much better for halpha  in narrowband? But will have a better focuser. It would be very stable on my mount.  I like what I hear about this scope though. 

The 100mm equinox is double the weight of the Vixen but also screams quality and stability. It is a bit long.  It would compliment the ST80/quark well if I got a reducer. It is at the limit of what my mount can due for future imaging solar @ 12.6 lbs without the quark/camera, it may just be limited to visual until I upgrade the mount. I could be okay with this as I wont be imaging for a while still, but that means I would need to purchase an Orion Atlas in addition to a laptop and ASI174mm mono. Good bye $4000 grand lol. 

What would you choose if you had my set up and would like to try beginner imaging sooner than later?  (eq5, future quark chromo, modded st80) 

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I heard the Vixen is unrivaled in views in its class. I saw a youtube video of it looking at Jupiter with a 5x barlow and it blew my mind. Much better than my 8 inch newt!!!

Remember that when you see an image it will not be the same as when you look through the eyepiece, also remember that a person showing you how good their scope is will not pick the poor image to put up, they will select the good one.

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Hi Tyson. I use a Celestron CG-4 Omni mount with my Evostar 120 and have reasonable success both visual and solar imaging (I've not done much night time imaging though). I am guessing this scope will be a little heavier than either of the two you are considering. Sure, an EQ6 will do a better job but is hardly "portable".  As regards which scope, I have not used either but for me the extra aperture would be the key and I would go with the 100ED.

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Aperture wins every time. Try the Skywatcher DS pro, same ED optics, but I think the tube is lighter.

Or the Celestron Omni 100ED or Celestron ED 100R if you can find one, same optics but cheaper and you can put the savings towards a HEQ5 mount for better imaging stability :-)

Dave

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