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  2. He's in a minority for sure. The minority of highly experienced well heeled telescope connoisseurs who also dabble in astrophotography who know their sheet. 😉
  3. On an alt-azimuth tack, I use my ED120 on a Skytee 2 or Giro Ercole on a Uni 28 and it's very steady even at 300x. On sharp vs mushy, I use my ED120 for outreach at my astro society regularly and the experienced members (mostly newt or SCT owners) often comment how sharp the planets look through the ED120. If I didn't have the ED120 or the 130mm triplet I would be looking very hard at either a Stellalyra 125 ED doublet or a TSA 120 if I could stretch to one. 4.7-5 inches is a very nice aperture for a quality refractor in terms both of performance potential and relative ease of use🙂
  4. I think a 5" Refractor is now solidifying. The remaining fly in ointment is satisfactory planetary AP.
  5. Yes, it’s a non smell type, as I did know about the issues with the stuff that smells of vinegar when curing… The dome steamed up as soon as I sealed it down, and is slowly now clearing, and the desiccant is changing colour already slowly too, so hopefully it’s working…👍🏻
  6. There's one available (customer return). And you think the mounts expensive? You can achieve similar with a camera and computer controller either pc or on board computer. 30mm guidescope £50, Zwo 120mm guidecam 150 odd, Zwo asiair mini 215 odd. All the above put together, also much cheaper if buying used, you'll also need 12v power either battery or a mains adaptor. No PC required, control via app. Note an Asiair is only compatible with zwo products barring the mount which they support a lot of brands. If you don't want to use an Asiair you can source a raspberry pi 4 or 5 and load astroberry (free) or Stellarmate (paid) onto it for even less outlay.
  7. The AM3 is expensive! But I'm not in the market for either! I'm more interested in any equivalent for the StarAid which FLO says has been 'discontinued'. They didn't say if that means just discontinued by FLO, or discontinued by the maker, Louise
  8. Interesting stuff…. Although the video/review could have been better I generally agree with Ed Tring and think he’s made some good points. Towards the end and in summary, he mentions “are you happy with the quality of the images that this produces? If yes then buy it. If not then don’t” - seems like good advice. For me (I’m not an imager anyway but if I was) I would want something more/better. At the same time the SeeStar 50 is a great gadget and I can see the attraction. But I’m holding out for the SeeStar X100 Pro Max. He also says that he thinks the SeeStar is good at lunar and solar. However, looking at the lunar & solar images it produces I think that this is its weak point. A smartphone with cheap telescope has been able to produce better lunar/solar images for years. For me it looks best at faint fuzzies - DSO. Although I prefer visual I do like to take and experiment with the occasional smartphone snap. Usually to document what I’ve seen. To me the SeeStar is the astrophotography equivalent of point-and-shoot… taking a snap. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that and in today’s world there’s a big market for all kinds of snaps. Eg the young, social media etc is full of them with some making a living out of it. Here, the resolution or producing high quality images doesn’t matter. After all, these things are for tiny little smartphone screens. And apart from pushing through some Instagram filters, playing with the stock camera app sliders, there’s no appetite for processing. Having said that - with the SeeStar you’re taking a snap of something you haven’t seen, so maybe it’s not quite the same as a traditional snap. In Ed’s review he also mentioned people in visual outreach type events wanting to take pictures of what they’ve seen at the eyepiece. The assumption is that this must be easy. After all, they take snaps of everything else. But as he says “it’s not there yet”. I’ve had this before too. Eg one of my daughter’s friends (who said she wasn’t interested in astronomy) ended up being amazed when she saw the moon through our Dob. Here I also got the “can I take a picture?” Fortunately I’m geared up for that and was easily able to take something with my phone and pass it onto her. This lunar “snap” was then plastered on her social media accounts and used for sometime as her smartphone wallpaper. The fact the image was of low resolution did not matter to her and I doubt that she even noticed or cared. It was a snap of something she had seen, something she’d experienced and enjoyed which she wanted to share. There are a lot of people like that.
  9. Agree, if I had my time again and I had all the money I’d spent on scopes, I’d go for the TSA120. I wouldn’t even think about a reflector.
  10. Hi all, some advice needed. Only had my scope a few weeks. Heritage 130p. Have managed a few nights getting to grips with it in-between the clouds and rain. I'm really interested in locating the pons brooks comet and viewing. My eyepieces are the 10mm and 25mm that came with the scope also I've bought a skywatcher 32mm and 6.3mm. which would you say to find and observe. Or would I find then change to look closer? Thanks in advance.
  11. True, But to save you some time and money….. I have had many telescopes and all the different types and the only scope type I would recommend as truly sharp is a refractor. But that is just me 🤣
  12. Just a data point here…. I have a 100mm F/8 refractor that sits happily on a Vixen GP (similar to a SW EQ5) mounted on a Berlebach UNI28. I tried my 120mm F/7.5 refractor on the Vixen GP/Berlebach combo and it was too unstable for high power planetary.
  13. Maybe, it is a necessary path to travel on the road to enlightenment?
  14. I do think the 5” frac is the one. If you go smaller you may always think what if, where you’re less likely to do that if you got a 5”. IME the mounting requirements between the 102ED & 120/125mms were no different.
  15. I reached the same conclusion with binoculars.. My eight eye is not as good as my left one and thankfully I'm "lefty" (..like Al Pacino in Donnie Brasco) .
  16. You should attend an astro meet and look through a few scopes if you can.
  17. Hi, your not the first person who's said that about the C9.25 and Jupiter. But, I can't be sure if I'll end up in the mushy or Sharp view camp if I get one.
  18. If you want to lighten the setup in this day and age consider a ZWO am3 or am5. The lack of needing counterweights is a godsend, with the ZWO you also don't need to spend time balancing ra and Dec because it has hd on both axis. The zwo also operates in EQ and alt az. Other options from ioptron are available.
  19. Thanks Bosun, A very interesting post. Have you tried your 10" dobsonian on your az-eq6, or is it a flextube one? I had considered the 180mm mak, but could never find images of jupiter or saturn that matched those in sct or equivalent Newts. But, I note your comment about it in relation to a 300 mm Newtonian. I have been trying to avoid the dobsonian /newt path but primarily for visual observation. With planetary AP, I wouldn't be looking through it. Obviously the odd visual observation through it would be nice too.
  20. Yep - that's certainly how I've found things, several times 🙂
  21. Also remember, what ever you decide to go with, it will be the wrong choice. It's a given. A couple of months or year down the road, you're start getting niggling doubts that you should have taken a different route. Then it starts all over again. It happens to us all.
  22. Zwo Am3 would be the equivalent, Am5 for larger payload. Ioptron do larger ones hem27, their HAE have harmonic drives on both axis like the zwo ones (so no balancing in both Ra and Dec required), higher up the budget you've got Rainbow RST which has been on the market for years before HD flooded the market, Pegasus NYX and the new player on the market Warp Astron with their servo HD drives WD17 and WD20. Once you've used a HD mount, you'll wonder why you ever bothered with a traditional EQ mount, especially if you need to carry it out and back in.
  23. ~ I do no imaging so cannot comment on that aspect, but the best views of Jupiter I've had were through my C-Nine-Two-Five. Which means seeing is everything. .
  24. I use an 11 & 20mm Televue plossl for Ha, work really well for solar. Can pick them up relatively cheaply on the used market. Have an older Celestron 12.5mm Ultima that works really nicely too. Been meaning to try the new Tak TPL line but they’re quite expensive in comparison.
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