John

If you are looking for DSO's keep any light as dim as you can. My personal preference is no light at the scope when I'm going for the really faint stuff. For planetary and lunar observing it does not matter. In fact dark adapted eyes are less effective in picking up subtle planetary features.

Just a further thought. Both the 100mm and 76mm Taks are superb scopes in their aperture of course. It's easy for us to urge you in the direction of the 100mm for lots of good reasons but at the end of the day it's your money and the way you want to approach the hobby that matters most and I would not feel easy if we pushed you into a decision that you were not ultimately comfortable with. If the smaller, lighter, easier to mount scope will get used more, that's the one to go for

I use a Vixen type dovetail bar bolted (2 bolts) onto the tube clamp to hold my FC100-DL. It is not heavy and it does make adjusting the position of the tube easy, should you need to do it. Some people use tube rings and a dovetail bar but the tube diameter of the FC100's is 95mm which is quite hard to find rings for. IMHO the clamp plus DT bar does a good job anyway. 100mm is, IMHO, preferable over 76mm even at lower magnifications. More resolution and light grasp is beneficial even at lower powers. BUT ...... portability is not such an issue for me and my mounts are heavier duty than the Scopetech I think.

Great report Louise It's been a while since I've seen a clear sky here so it's nice to read that they still come along !

My first proper scope had a similar design. It was a 6 inch F/6 newtonian made by Astro Systems of Bedfordshire, UK back in the 1980's. The secondary was adjustable but the primary was fixed. These scopes were all metal though and carefully machined to maintain what was termed "refractor-like optical alignment" in the brochure. It worked rather well as I recall So if the scope is manufactured and assembled with some accuracy and care, it is a viable approach. This was my Astro Systems scope:

No offense taken at all ! 🤣 It was a daft comment for me to make It must be the couple of glasses of wine I had with supper talking !

Thanks. Is it available for Android as well as Apple ? I'm lucky - I can see Polaris all night from my back yard and have no problem finding it using the "pointer" stars in Ursa Major. My mounts are un-driven alt-azimuth so I don't need to align them.

Is there a PS Align Am (Amateur) version ?

When I used to go to club meets, I often had to confirm the name of a few brightish stars (not Polaris) to folks who were setting up their GOTO's

I spent a very happy evening a few years back picking off the galaxies that the Sky & Telescope Pocket Sky Atlas shows within the "bowl" of the Big Dipper. I seem to recall there were about 10 that my 12 inch dob would show. Some were quite challenging though. Funny how satisfying seeing a faint smudge of light can be

For what it's worth this is the set that I use with my FC100-DL (which is F/9): Panoptic 24 Delos 17.3 Delos 14 Pentax XW 10mm, 7mm, 5mm and 3.5mm Nagler Zoom 4mm-2mm I could probably do without the 17.3mm and 3.5mm as I don't seem to use those as much as the others. I've not used a Morpheus but they seem to get universally good feedback so those would be on my shortlist if I was starting a set off now. They are less expensive than the Delos and XW's as well. The Explore Scientific 24mm 68 is pretty much as good in performance terms as the 24mm Panoptic in an F/7.4 scope so you could save some pennies there. The Tele Vue DeLites don't have quite the field of view (62 degrees) but are very high performers as well. Plenty of options available !

As far as I know the Astromaster 130 comes with tube rings and a Vixen-type dovetail bar so that should fit into the dovetail clamp on the HEQ5 Pro mount.

Yes. The HEQ5 pro will carry that scope really easily.

Why not give it a go and see how you get on with the Tak prism ?. You can always sell it on and move to a Baader easily enough. Tak stuff sells pretty well on the used market.

I use a Panoptic 24mm with my FC100-DL it it works very well indeed. It provides the widest views in the 1.25 inch format. I don't use 2 inch eyepieces with the Tak. I use the Baader T2 Zeiss prism with the scope and again that was a sound choice. I think the Tak prism is good as well, just not as well made as the Baader. I'm not that keen on the Tak compression collar approach so I prefer the Baader click-lock for holding eyepieces. Others will have their preferences though, those are just mine These scopes thrive on high magnifications. You will certainly find that you get a lot of use from a 4mm eyepiece as well as the 6mm. I have a 2-4mm Nagler zoom that gets used in my FC100 very often - far more than I thought it would !

Just to add another vote for the 100mm aperture here. I've owned a few refractors of 70mm, 80mm and 90mm over the years but just didn't feel satisfied with the views even though they were nice a light weight scopes. My smallest aperture refractor is now the Takahashi FC100-DL but the DC is both lighter and shorter with little or no compromise in optical performance so I'm sure it would serve you very well. The views of deep sky objects are of course limited in any 100mm scope but I'm sure you are aware of that.

The UHC and O-III filters are effective on a wide range of nebula types. These are an often quoted articles on the impact of various filter types: https://www.prairieastronomyclub.org/useful-filters-for-viewing-deep-sky-objects/ https://www.prairieastronomyclub.org/filter-performance-comparisons-for-some-common-nebulae/ My skies are generally around bortle 5 and I find these filters (and occasionally the H-Beta filter) are pretty effective. They work even better under a darker sky.

Nice report ! Glad you had a good spell of clear sky. It was clear for a while here earlier but not long enough to get stuck in to observing. I don't know if you have an O-III filter but that really makes the Owl Nebula pop out. It is worth observing without a filter as well though because then you can see M108 as well as the nebula. While the O-III filter increases the contrast of the nebula, the galaxy takes a real hit.

I did own a TMB Supermonocentric 5mm for a while. Probably the best eyepiece in terms of pure optical quality that I have ever used. But very hard work with my undriven alt-azimuth mounts ! I'm not really that dedicated or that much of a perfectionist Today I could probably get about 3x what I sold it for back then !.

Just wait until you see what is in the Virgo / Coma Berenices area ! Markarian's Chain for example

I've seen these reasonably often with my 4 inch refractors. The brighter pair can be spotted with my 11x70 binoculars but I think would be quite a challenge with 8x42's. My skies are around bortle 5. While you are in the Leo area, at the "head" end of the lion NGC 2903 is a good one to try for with a small scope: As you can see from the above, Leo is a rich hunting ground for galaxies with something like an 8 or 10 inch scope

Interesting report from the BBC on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 14 mission: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/golf/55927727

I think that is very true. I keep thinking about amalgamating my two sets into a single set that will serve all my scopes. I'll take the plunge one day

When aligning finders in day time I use the most distant object that I can find - about a mile away ideally. Even then I re-adjust using a star at night to ensure that the accuracy is as good as possible. For the optical finder I try and get the scope / finder alignment to the point where something bang on the cross hairs of the finder is central in the field of view of a high power eyepiece. I find having accurately aligned finders is worth a little effort. I also try and setup my optical RACI finders so that the angle of their eyepieces match the angle that the eyepiece of the scope is at as well. Then I can move my eye from the finder eyepiece to the scope eyepiece with minimum movement. These are all little tweaks that I've found help the finding process. Everybody will develop their own preferences as they find what works best for them

I'm sure you will get it on another occasion Nikolay. I can't recall observing 40 Eridani so I will read your report and have a look for it next time I am out. Last night I found Pi Arietis near Mars and that turned out to be a nice uneven brightness triple star.