John

I would have big reservations as well if that is the scope. Worth avoiding I think.

The mount is sometimes called the GEM 1. It is about the same in capacity as the EQ3-2 so not really up to a 200P Skywatcher, even for visual observing. If that is the scope it is not a Skywatcher 200P by the way.

The EQ5's can be good bargain workhorse mounts with a fair amount of capacity for their price. Especially used - I recently sold a nice one for £140 complete with steel tripod ! They will easily hold a 4 inch refractor and even 4.7 inch for visual observing.

Luckily all the planets I observe seem to be slow movers

Unfortunately out of production since the creator and sole maker of the mount passed away in October 2016. It is a superb mount, mostly used with my 130mm F/9.2 triplet refractor but occasionally with others.

A fascinating book about novel telescope designs is Peter L Manly's "Unusual Telscopes": https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unusual-Telescopes-Peter-L-Manly/dp/052148393X It's a good read

For me it is the "dump it down and observe" nature of the alt-azimuth, the positioning of the scope tube and eyepiece on the mount and the movement of the scope around the sky that has kept me coming back to them. I've owned probably a dozen or so different equatorials over the years from Meade, TAL, Skywatcher, Celestron and Vixen (I've been at this a long time ) but each time I found myself preferring the alt-azimuth approach. I'm not at all anti-equatorial mount though, I just find that I prefer alt azimuth. This was a lovely Vixen GP that I had last year for a while and very elegant it looks too: It worked just as a good equatorial mount should, but, again, I found that I just preferred using my alt-azimuth mounts, so I let the Vixen go to a new home rather than have it gather dust and take up space. I still have the nice wooden tripod but it now has my Skytee II on it. These are just my preferences though. I'm sure others will have different ideas of what suits them Incidently, I do a lot of high power observing, often using 250x - 400x.

I've owned several equatorial mounts over the years including the excellent Vixen SP, GP and GP DX mounts. As purely a visual observer though, I have now moved wholesale to alt-azimuth mounts, with and without slow motion controls (two with and two without currently) for my refractors and my newtonians. That's just my preference though, of course. You can really only find out what you prefer by tying things out I'm afraid.

I like your style of writing Us observers can't post flashy pictures of our achievements but we can do our best to describe them, the circumstances surrounding the observations and even the emotions experienced as a result. Hopefully such reports prove interesting and encouraging to others If I ever see a clear sky again (I've been wondering lately ) I'll certainly post a narrative report about what I see somewhere in the observing section. Keep them coming Joe

It does look a bit like some of the stony meteorites that come out of north africa. If you cut and polish it it might reveal a chondritic structure like this example known as North West Africa 869: http://www.meteorites.com.au/nwa869/

Actually mostly I use the Skytee II. The Ercole needs counterweighting to be really smooth in both axis of movement. The Skytee II is not as nicely made by any means but does not need a counterweight even with the heavier ED120 on board. I keep the Ercole because I like it's simple design and high quality construction.

I've had positive experiences with the AZ-4 and 4 inch refractors as well. It's not quite stable enough for an F/9 (in my opinion) but it handled my Vixen ED102SS F/6.5 well. Currently I use a Skytee II or an Ercole with my 120mm and smaller refractors:

I use all three methods but mostly a simple cheshire eyepiece. I'm most confident about the cheshire because post adjustment star tests seem to demonstrate that this device gets it right. My secondary mirrors rarely seem to need adjusting. Usually it is just a tweak to the primary tilt that is required.

To get it tested you will need to send a sample to a recognised meteorite analysis lab such as the Natural History Museum. There is more information here including a few initial basic tests you can do yourself: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/natureplus/community/identification/blog/tags/how_to.html The only way to be sure that it is of extra-terrestrial origin is to have a sample analysed by an accredited lab. 99% of things referred to them are not meteorites though.

Thats the great trick of astronomy equipment purchase - work out the manufacturer and then source the lowest cost version of it that maintains the quality

It's satisfying to use a setup where, seeing conditions and observer acuity allowing, you can have some confidence that the view is as good as can be got from that aperture

I used pure soap flakes dissolved into lukewarm tap water and rinsed off with distilled water. Cotton wool balls to gently swab the soapy water off using just the weight of the wet cotton wool and constant strokes away from the centre of the mirror.

I think it is the clutch that is used when a certain type of motor drive is fitted to the RA axis. This thread from 2019 may shed some more light on this:

Great report ! Reminds me of the first views I had with a 4 inch ED doublet refractor and also with a Pentax 10mm XW If the cloud cover here lasts much longer it will seem like a "first light" again when I do eventually get an observing opportunity Glad you are impressed by your new purchases

To keep the exit pupil below 7mm you max focal length eyepiece will be 22.4mm. To get a 4+ degree true field in that scope the eyepiece will need a 120 degree AFoV I think.

The William Optics 110mm Megrez ED doublet had a focal ratio of F/5.95 so an Aero ED 40mm eyepiece will give a true field of 4.27 degrees at 16x and an exit pupil of 6.72mm. These scopes are out of production now but when they do come up are not terribly expensive - maybe £600-£700 ?.

I think it's the 3rd time in the 8 1/2 years that I've owned the scope.

3.8 degrees frames the east & west portions of the Veil very well and gives a nice frame of sky around them.

My XW 3.5 does get a lot of use, mostly in my refractors on double stars, the moon and planets but sometimes in my dobsonian as well where it delivers 454x - useful for small point sources such as the moons of Uranus and Neptune. I used the 5mm and 3.5mm XW's during this session for example:

My Vixen ED102SS is F/6.5 and gave a 4.1 degree true field at 16.7x with the Aero ED 40mm. The exit pupil is 6.15mm with that combo. Mostly I use the 31mm Nagler though so that reduces the true field to 3.83 degrees at 21.4x but with a 4.77mm exit pupil. An ST120 could produce a 4 degree true field with a 40mm Aero ED but the exit pupil would be 8mm.