John

I think you can do better than the AstroMaster 70AZ for a budget of £100-£150. Much better. Take your time and see what suggestions come forward from others.

Hi and welcome to the forum. An idea of what your budget actually is would help a lot - the choice these days is huge and prices vary widely as well. As "food for thought" here are a selection of decent starter scopes from the forum sponsor First Light Optics: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/beginner-telescopes.html One piece of advice straight away is to discount the National Geographic scopes. They are really pretty poor.

On your subject, I'm not sure you will see any benefits with your scope from 100 degree eyepieces, apart from the wider field of view. You current eyepieces are of very good quality - the Delos are a touch better than the Ethos. So, unless you really yearn to see that additional true field, there might be other ways to spend your money !

I've moved this to the eyepieces section - it should get more responses there. I have left a link to it in the original posting location so people will find it from either place.

Does it deal with the moment arm issue John ?

Just to be sure, is this the Bresser scope that you are thinking of ?: https://www.harrisontelescopes.co.uk/acatalog/bresser-messier-5-dobsonian.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI0eLLi6bK6QIVze3tCh1CowobEAQYBCABEgI0YvD_BwE

I wonder if it is the same 36.4mm thread that this Vixen 40mm Kellner uses ?: https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/500045-what-to-do-with-vixen-k-40-eyepiece/?p=6585567

With my mount, the precise location of the PTFE pads (3 on the azimuth, 2 on each altitude) was apparently quite important to the smoothness of the movement. The pads bear against black laminate of some sort which covers bottom of the rocker box and the edges of the alt bearings. Works very well I have heard of old vinyl LP records being used as azimuth bearings !

I was thinking that someone might want to replace their current 2 inch legs that have been damaged / got rusty. I don't think the 2 inch legs will fit onto a hub that previously had smaller diameter legs fitted ?

Someone might be interested in it just for the legs - I think they are inter-changable with HEQ5 / EQ6 hubs.

Yes, 6 inch F/12 refractors need very heavy duty mounts ! I reckon the 80mm F/15 is going to need at least an HEQ5 / Skytee II to control that moment arm force.

sketch = drawing of what you see

More open sky than clouds there Jeremy. I had the opposite here ! It was a lovely sight when I did get some views though and it sounds like you enjoyed the spectacle as well

I observed the Blinking Planetary the other night with my 12 inch dob. It doesn't really blink with that aperture. A smaller aperture gets that effect though.

Interesting that Bresser introduced two long achromats a year or two back as well. 90mm F/13.3 and 102mm F/13.2. Different end of the price / quality spectrum than these ScopeTech ones but somebody must think there is a market for them. A few years ago I think folks thought the long achromatic refractor was no more. Clearly not !

Lovely moments this evening, what it's all about

Easy to mistake small planetary nebs for stars at low power. One trick is to hold the filter over the top of the eyepiece and move it (the filter) in and out of the view. This should cause the planetary nebule to "blink" on and off which can make it easier to spot. Can be a by fiddly with the filter though.

Loads of clouds around this evening but I got lucky and had some nice views of Venus and Mercury in the same field of view with my Takahashi FC100 refractor. The Panoptic 24mm gave me a 1.8 degree true field which framed the 2 planets perfectly. Venus thin crescent on one side of the field and Mercury's tiny gibbous disk on the other. I think they are around 1.25 degrees apart just now. Despite Mercury's very small apparent size I could tell that the illuminated portions of both planets were facing the same way - towards the Sun of course ! No time for images because I was catching glimpses between clouds but it was a lovely sight for those few minutes when they both came into view. 2 worlds, one of them the same size as Earth and 46 million km away and the other 38% as large as our home planet and 161 million km distant. Both basking in light from the star that we share with them. This is why I do this hobby

Ouch !!! So sorry that this happened Stu. Hopefully you will either be able to get the tube, tube shaped again or at least move the mirrors, cells etc into another tube. The secondary vane should straighten I should think. Not sure about the tube though.

I've found some more photos of these on another forum. They remind me very, very much of the Pentax J series refractors. Goodness how I wanted one of those way back when ! These Scopetech refractors look practically identical to the Pentax J80.

It will much higher in the sky in July.

I love Summer observing - some fantastic targets in and around the Summer Triangle and elsewhere ! The O-III filter earns its keep on the Veil Nebula alone - so much to explore in just that one target ! https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-blogs/explore-night-bob-king/explore-veil-nebula/

I'm going to post another picture of my dob, because that's what this thread is all about

I think it's easy to overtighten if you don't realise that they don't need to be tight ! They are adjustment screws not locking screws.

I've used my dob at very high powers (400x plus) and it is very stable. Rock solid in fact. My garden is pretty smooth and level though. My Lightbridge 12 was stable as well, just larger and a lot heavier. The LB 12 weighed around 37kg in total. My dob weighs 10 kg less.