John

Interesting info on UK and Ireland falls here: http://www.meteoritehistory.info/UKIRELAND/INDEX.HTM

The fun continues for a week here by the look of this. I'm sure there was some more green showing a couple of days ago Mars will be a tiny pink dot next time I see it at this rate !

You have had some great advice in this thread already. My advice is, whatever you decide to go for is to: - Keep it simple to set up and take down - Keep it reasonably portable It is much better to have a 6 or 8 inch scope that can be deployed quickly and easily, moved around as needed to get the best views / darkest sky, and reasonably easy to pop into a car if you need to than it is to have a larger scope that, after initial enthusiasm, gathers dust because it's hard work to set up and move about. Avoid stuff with complex power requirements and lengthy setup times. 11 inch SCT's are big, heavy devices - I've helped set up a few and their owners quite often are still setting up and aligning their SCT's at our society events half an hour or so after I've set my non-GOTO 12 inch dobsonian up and I'm moving from target to target. Even the 9.25 inch ones are quite a handful !

Imagine the "For Sale" advert - some signs of wear from normal use but some TLC will soon sort these out. - buyer must make own carriage arrangements. - buyer to provide suitable topography for mounting the instrument. - strictly no returns ......

I've come across this photo (scanned from a print) from 20 years ago of me with my brand new TAL100RT. I bought this new in February 2000 as a 40th birthday present for myself having managed nearly a decade without a decent scope after our children arrived. I think it cost £250 delivered from Siberia. They supplied the scopes in huge custom made wooden trunks back then. Rather like a coffin ! Fine scope that TAL was

Some reading when you get time: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/317902-the-history-of-tal-telescopes/

Apologies for deflecting your observing report thread Stu I can always start a new one on replicating the views of the early observers.

A little research into Thomas Harriot seems to indicate that the telescope he used, his "dutch trunk" as he called it, magnified around 6x. Maybe the 6 x 25 non achromat finder of my old Tasco might not be far off It would be interesting to see how the Moon looks though that, when examined carefully, compared with Harriot's map

At the top end, projecting out over the corrector lens: Good question actually - it will help others too I reckon

I'd like to get hold of something that has a similar spec and performance to the scopes that Galileo used. It would be fun to see what he had to work with (albeit under darker skies I guess) and see what can actually be seen today with such an instrument.

My dob is a solid tube 12 inc F/5.3 so the tube is nearly 6 feet long. I find the cheshire really simple and quick to use. Quick check and tweak if needed before I start to use the scope. Takes about 30 seconds. Having used this method for a few years though I know just what to look for and where to tweak. So that does back up that the way that works best for you and that you are comfortable and confident with (that last word is important I think) is the one to go for. For newcomers to collimation it may be necessary to try more than one approach to find out what works for them. Learning what a decent star test looks like helps too - good for the confidence if what looks to be collimated actually can be demonstrated to be so !

+1 for that

I have a F/11.1 90mm chinese achromat (Synta ?) that I can easily stop down to 60mm / F16.6. That would be interesting to compare with the Japan made 1960's 60mm F/13.3. The latter is circle T so Towa I think ? A project for the Winter

Good points of course !. Fortunately I have an F/13.3 60mm achromat from the 60's so I don't need to stop anything down. Just need to get it on a steady mount and equip it with a 1.25 inch diagonal. Reading threads like this provides an incentive to do that

Not that I'm going to do it but I'm curious, would a 50mm F/24 triplet not show even less CA than a 130mm F/9.2 ?

Canada has a thriving pre-owned astro equipment market as we do here in the UK: https://www.astrobuysell.com/ As has been said $200 will buy a somewhat nicer used scope than it will a new one. Also, stocks of new scopes are very low practially everywhere this year due to the pandemic.

I could stop down my 130mm triplet refractor to 50mm and have an F/24 triplet apo. The 130mm is already classed as a super apochromat so I guess it would be a 50mm super, duper, apochromat Bit of a bulky 2 inch refractor though ......

I bought a Hotech a few years back and that was out of alignment as well so even the better ones can have this issue occasionally Having been through a number of the better ones (a Baader that I had was also not collimated accurately and was a so and so to sort because it's not a symmetrical shape) I bought a low cost collimator and collimated it as accurately as I could using a 10 metre distant target. 99% of the time I use a simple cheshire with my 12 inch dobsonian but when I do use the laser it is with a barlow using the method mentioned here: http://www.smartavtweaks.com/RVBL.html My laser collimator is the same as the one used in the above link. Otherwise I use my laser collimator for checking the alignment of refractor focusers and not a lot else.

I find the moon OK with my 12 inch scope but I do tend to observe at high magnifications which dim the surface and make it quite comfortable to observe. With my smaller aperture scopes, at the sort of magnifications that I like to use to tease out the finer lunar details (250x plus), I sometimes find the surface a little dimmer than I would like.

Do they do a RACI one at that price as well ?

I think with that finder design the image is the right way up but left and right are still reversed. Same view as a refractor / mak-cass / SCT when using a mirror diagonal.

With short focal length plossls and orthos I've often seen the field stop incorporated into the lens retaining ring. I guess having these small field stops as a separate screw in element would be a more complex way to make the eyepiece.

I'm at around 100m here. We have been in quite thick cloud / fog for the whole weekend. Down in the nearby valleys, when out walking, we have had a grey ceiling of cloud but decent visibility.

You are not observing through a window are you ? (just though I'd ask !)

Still got the fog here