dweller25

Yes, a 4” is a good choice for all the objects you list. Sharp and quick to cool, lightweight too and very easy to use. It will sit happily on the Skywatcher AZ4 mount. The Starfield 4” F/7 sold by Firstlight Optics is a good choice. Here is my 4” on an equatorial mount.

That’s brilliant 👍

The Takahashi FS102 that Ed Ting bought very cheaply because it was blue….. 🫤

Or the quickest way to devalue it ?

I observed this at the same time, your drawing is very good. It’s clear for me tonight and the GRS will be on show…….

Lucky for you see didn’t say “you’ll get your answer on the next clear night” 😱

Good to see you back again Neil, another great image 👍

I can 😈

Top tip - After many years of using numerous telescopes I have found that you will see more stars/planets/galaxies if you point them away from a wall. Nice turret 👍

No point, there is only one choice 🤣

If I could only have one scope it would be an APO refractor between 100 and 120mm.

+1 👍

Well that’s a scope and a half, owner looks like Fernando Alonso of Formula 1 fame - which makes sense as you would need plenty of dosh to buy that 🤣

I find best results are at perfect focus.

Hello @johnturley I also have a bad back and have recently totally changed my telescopes to suit this. I sold my TSA102 and replaced it with a DZ - the DZ is lighter, cools quicker and optically I see no planetary performance difference. This is my keeper scope and will grow old(er) with me 🙂 I sold my FS128 as the whole setup was just too heavy - the FS128 outperformed the DZ in all areas. I have only ever used the DZ up to x232 on Mars and it was very sharp, I don’t know how much higher I could go as my local seeing conditions just North of Manchester are not good. Your question about how the DZ compares to a non- premium 120-127 ED is very interesting and one I have mulled over for quite some time because I miss the FS128 views - but not the weight 🥴 After doing a bit of research I decided that if I wanted a larger but lightish refractor then I probably would not see much difference at the eyepiece with a SW120ED. The new crop of 125mm FPL53 F7.8 ED’s could give a reasonable improvement but are not light enough or short enough for my Vixen GP. Perhaps your ES127 will be similar ? The obvious refractor choice would therefore be a TSA120 but at £4.5k I’m not sure the wet, cloudy Lancashire skies are worthy of it. So I bought a used Mewlon 180 ! The M180 is light and short and sits nicely on my light Vixen GP, it outperforms my DZ in all areas - apart from cooldown - by a significant margin. I suspect it has very similar performance to the FS128. So I no longer need to consider another refractor. Just giving you a data point on your question and I’m looking forward to your comparison 👍

Hello @johnturley, this may be of interest… https://www.firstlightoptics.com/takahashi-other-accessories/more-blue-universal-finder-base-for-tak.html

Maybe not, I live just North of Manchester under light polluted skies and can see it in the 50mm finder scope.

@Priesters I know you said £700 max but……. The AZ4 plus Starfield 100mm F/7 APO is a great combo. The AZ4 plus Skywatcher 150mm F/12 Maksutov is also a great combo but you would need to wrap the scope with reflectix to ensure thermal equilibrium straight out of the door. And finally, the good old 8” F/6 Dobsonian - enough aperture to show a lot of detail on the planets and well within your budget.

Is your secondary central to the corrector and the OTA ?

PS - in your stacked image of Jupiter the two moons are clearly elongated so something is affecting image quality.

I am wondering how the primary on your scope is attached to the focuser, it may be glued and there have been reported issues with this method. https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/759150-c8-edgehd-with-heavy-astigmatism-mirror-glue/

Apologies if you worked this out but I do not know what level you are at… To move the scope to lower targets you need to loosen the right ascension and declination knobs, then once the target is found tighten the knobs back up.

Did you try any of the suggestions that were made in September ?

@LunarRob if you look straight up from Jupiter you will eventually find the Andromeda galaxy, a spiral galaxy like ours 3.1 million light years away. Do you have “Stellarium” ? its free sky map software that shows where things are

Hello @Higgs_Bozon and welcome to SGL. That “scratch” (it could be lint) will have no effect whatsoever on the views and if you got the scope for half price because of it then you got a great deal 👍