John

The shorter Delos are about 8mm from being par-focal with the XW's aren't they ? I went for the 17.3 and 14 Delos because they reach focus pretty close (but not exactly) to where the XW's do because the two types play together in my 1.25 inch set. I need parfocal rings for my Nagler 2-4 zoom and Panoptic 24 though which normally are part of the same par-focal group as the shorter Delos's.

I have one on my Vixen ED102SS which is now around 20 years old. The handle is a little younger though

Thank goodness for that - a lovely refractor to look at The mount and the surrounding countryside are very pleasing as well !

Personally I prefer using refractors for double star observing. On your budget, if you have the mount for it, I might be looking our for one of the Bresser 127L F/9.3 achromats. Mak-cassegrains are also good and mak-newtonians too. They produce star images that are really very "refractor like" and you can buy aperture for less than good refractors per cm.

You may well not need the 15mm I usually skip straight from 21mm to 13mm or from 24mm to 14mm. I can understand the desire to have the full set but sometimes there is redundancy in that approach.

Baader Q-Turret 2.25x. I only use it with the zoom eyepiece though. The two seem to be a particularly good match. I don't barlow my other eyepieces.

Zooms are great for double star splitting. I use one practically all the time now for that purpose. Either the 7.2mm - 21.5mm plus 2.25x barlow or the Nagler 2mm - 4mm zoom.

You may find this thread started by another member on eyepieces for his 300P dobsonian of interest if that is where your future path may lie: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/356792-eye-piece-advise-for-300p/

That's the sort of view I have of them

I saw it last night with 8x56 binoculars. Still quite distinct but not as splendid as when it was a naked eye comet, of course.

You can still see Comet Neowise with binoculars A steady tripod does help a lot with these larger binoculars as has been said.

It can impacts double stars where one component is very, very dim simply because the dim star is washed out. Otherwise, makes no difference. One "quite interesting" factoid on Epsilon Lyrae is that the gap between the slightly easier pair is 2.4 arc seconds which is about the same as Neptune's apparent diameter at the moment. So when you are admiring the split and that tiny sliver of blackness between the stars you can imagine how small Neptune is in the eyepiece

Last night I was using a 7.2mm - 21.5mm zoom, the Baader 2.25x barlow to get higher magnifications (I used up to 180x lest night) and a 25mm 58 degree Skywatcher eyepiece for low power, wider views. These are my travel / out reach eyepieces rather than my regular ones but they worked well in the refractor last night.

I was observing last night with a 90mm refractor very similar to the Skywatcher one and I could see the Cassini Division in Saturn's rings, Jupiter's Great Red Spot, the Andromeda galaxy and also split the "double double" stars Epsilon Lyrae. I have been observing for many years with many different scopes which makes it easier to find and observe these targets but the 90mm refractor is certainly capable of performing to the limit of it's aperture. I have only used the Skywatcher 130mm F/7.8 newtonian once or twice (a friends scope) but that worked pretty well too. As @vlaiv says, there is very little to pick between these in terms of capability and performance. The refractor might be a little more rugged and maintenance free. The reflector will show fainter objects better because of it's larger aperture.

Great report Stu ! "I’m beginning to wonder why I have all this lovely, and expensive kit!...." The experiences that I've been having with my little 90mm mak-cass and more recently an extremely low cost 90mm F/11 chinese achro refractor have led my thoughts in that direction quite often I'm afraid Not only do they deliver the goods but they are fun and, dare I say, relatively carefree to use

I had quite a lot of cloud here but in between the seeing was pretty good. Transparency was not so good so getting the 12 inch dob out was not really the right move but I did get some very nice views of Jupiter and Saturn with the lowly 90mm achro refractor. Amazing that the chinese can push out good quality 3.5 inch objectives at the price you can pick these things up for. Seeing the Cassini Division, Great Red Spot etc for the price of a few gallons of fuel I some ways the scope is more impressive than my Tak and LZOS. For what those things cost you would and should expect them to be top notch but this 90mm F/11 achromat OTA cost somewhat less than the finder on those scopes

On thing you need to watch out for with the older SCT's is mirror flop. I had one about the age that yours is and it had that issue. Basically the mirror would move slightly as the scope was pointed at different angles which put the scope out of collimation. Your older one might not have that issue though. Not all of them did.

The William Optic is a good diagonal. You do not have to buy a William Optics one though. These are also good: https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/info/p89_TS-Optics-Optics-2--Star-Diagonal-with-99--Reflection---1-12-lambda.html

I find my Vixen ED102SS refractor excellent for these large objects. It's F/6.5 so getting a 3 or 4 degree field of view is not too difficult.

I've just found it with 8x56 binoculars from here. It's glowing softly in Coma Berenices tonight. Not striking but fairly obvious just above the scatter of stars in that constellation:

Similar here. Most small scopes should show it but it's a case of finding it. By the way - I've moved this to the comet section. Hope that's OK.

Looks like a Celestron Celestar 8: http://www.company7.com/celestron/products/sch4.html 1990's I think. The hand controller is: Possibly RA only. DEC motor drive was optional.

The 25mm eyepiece should show a lovely view of the moon and many other things. A diagonal mirror is needed in between the scope focuser and the eyepiece to get the scope to focus though. From the look of the equipment list, your Father was using the scope for imaging so may not have actually observed with it. For observing it should look like this:

Over the past few years I've re-bought a few eyepieces that I used to own and enjoy. In almost all cases they did not prove so good the 2nd time around so I've learned a lesson now

Are you intending to downsize your collection Jeremy (or increase it, maybe ?) or do you feel that you have got to where you want to be now ?