John

I do the vast majority of my observing with scopes on alt-azimuth mounts and have done for years. I don't image though.

Thanks Don - very interesting ! Shame that the precise field stop position is not shown for the 12mm 92. The 17mm says 0.00 so I guess thats right at the shoulder of the eyepiece. The 12mm is likely to be around 2mm above that ? Wow ! - 12 lens elements for the ES 120 degree 9mm No wonder they are expensive !

I agree Alan. I'm doubtfull about that video as well.

I think this thread covers how to achieve that: There could be other threads that cover this as well on the forum. To fit the counterweight bar when there is a clamp on the end of that axis you need a clamp that has a 20mm hole drilled in it so that the counterweight bar can pass through the clamp and screw into it's threaded hole on the end of the axis. The Telescope Services (Germany) version of the Skytee II already has the tapped holes to add a clamp to the other end of the axis: https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/info/p4537_TS-Optics-AZ5-Alt-azimuthal-Mount-with-tripod-and-fine-adjustment.html

Yes they can. There may be some edge distortion with the longer focal length ones but the Omnis are plossls so dont have super wide fields and should be OK. Certainly better than the stock eyepieces you get with scopes.

Most (85% ?) of my kit was bought on the used market. Without that I would not have been able to afford what I have in all honesty. I tend to look for a used price (assuming the item is in excellent condition) of around 60% of the retail price. Occasionally I've found bargains for 50% of retail and very occasionally I've pushed my limit to 70% of retail for a hardly used or hard to acquire item. I've noticed that items on the used market are hanging around longer these days. Perhaps there has been some uncertainty around regarding investment in hobbies ?. Perhaps a newer generation of astronomers prefer to buy new ?. Hard to tell. I rarely buy items that have electronics within them - if I did I might well be more tempted by the warranty that newly purchased equipment comes with.

Nice report - thanks for posting it I've been pleasantly surprised by how good the BST Starguiders that I've owned have been. A few years ago I compared the 8mm BST Starguider with my 8mm Tele Vue Ethos and, apart from the massive field of view of the Ethos, the overall quality of the view was really not much different when used with my F/5.3 12 inch dobsonian scope. There is some variablity of optical performance across the range fo focal lengths but overall BST Starguiders are a big step up from the stock eyepieces that are supplied with scopes and an eyepiece that seems to perform pretty well in quite a wide range of scopes as well. They are quite a bit more comfortable to observe with than plossls or orthoscopics, especially in focal lengths shorter than 18mm because the BST Explorer design allows more comfortable eye relief and a larger eye lens than those designs. Out of fairness to the Baader 10mm Classic Ortho, its is optically a sharp, contrasty eyepiece with excellent light transmission and low scatter but the orthoscopic design inherantly has a 40-45 degree sharp field of view (the BCO actually has 50 degrees but the last 5 of those are not sharp) and an eye relief that is around 80% (max) of it's focal length.

Imaging DSOs or observing them ?

Great report Alan Since joining my local astro society I've been able to participate in lots of outreach type sessions and have found that showing the sky to others, especially others who have not looked through a telescope before, is probably the most enjoyable aspect of the hobby for me now. I think John Dobson hit the nail on the head when he said "....the importance of a telescope is not how big it is, it's not how well made it is, it's how many people less fortunate than you got to look through it..."

Another happy 1.25 inch Lunt HW user here. I use a single polariser on the eyepiece barrel and turn the eyepiece to get the desired brightness levels. It works very well IMHO. I agree with Stu that quality refractor optics give better quality results. Putting the Lunt wedge on my Tak FC-100DL produces amazingly sharp and detailed solar views. Not that there has been a huge amount to see recently

Good saving John. I recall that the 10% off sale has often been followed by a price increase by Tele Vue in the past.

This might help:

Quite a few refractor designs include push-pull collimation screws on the objective cell just for this purpose. Very few included tilt adjusters on the focuser mounting so that is trickier to sort out. Good piece here from one of our members on this: adventures-1.pdf

Hire an astronomy tutor ? - you can't be serious !

Er, yes they do. I've owned a number that proved to be out of collimation and / or had their focuser unit misaligned from the optical axis.

Aperturas are made by GSO. The GSO 8x50 finder is pretty much exactly the same as the Celestron and Orion ones. They are designed and work in exactly the same way. I've owned all thee types.

Hmmmm...... I don't observe from the Phillipines. I put together a short Powerpoint presentation for my astro society of what I think astro targets look like with small to medium astro scopes. It seems reasonably accurate based on my observing experience and others in the society tended to agree. The darkness of your skies and your observing experience will affect how much you can see. Here is a link to the presentation: telescopeviews.pptx

Its very rare for the view though a telescope, any telescope, to rival the images that you see even if they were made using a similar scope to the one you are viewing through. Our eyes just cannot compete with CCD imaging and post capture image processing.

I didnt actually get around to using 2 scopes on the AZ 100's that I was sent to try. Its a good point though

Sorry that I missed this post Dermot. I would look out for a pre-owned one in good order. They do crop up quite often.

That was the problem that I had when I had the AZ100. I think I got 3 short sessions of actual use during the time that I had the units that I was sent

As a mental exercise today I've been trying to recall other scopes that I've owned over the years. Us oldies need to do this sort of thing now and then to stave off becoming decrepit you know Anyway, I've come up with a further 20+ but I wont go into detail about them. A few didnt last that long in my ownership but only a couple were actually "dogs" as I recall: Skywatcher ED100 Skywatcher ED80 (a couple of these) Skywatcher Evostar 120 Skywatcher ST80 Celestron ST102 Skywatcher Skymax 127 mak-cassegrain Skywatcher Skymax 180 mak-cassegrain Skywatcher Skyliner 250PX Orion Optics Europa 250 F/4.8 TAL 100RT (a couple of these) TAL 150 F/8 Newtonian Bresser Messier 127L achromat refractor Meade AR5 127mm F/9.2 achromat refractor Meade AR6 152mm F/8 achromat refractor Meade Lightbridge 12 dobsonian Meade Starfinder 8 inch F/6 newtonian Helios Evostar 150 F/8 achromat refractor Helios 200P newtonian William Optics Megrez 90 William Optics 70 ED Tele Vue Ranger 70mm ED Celestron C5 SCT (3 of these) Celestron 8SE SCT (in addition to the C8 plus already mentioned in my earlier post) Tasco 60mm F/13 refractor - still have this one, my 1st scope. A bit scary, isn't it ?

Quite a list Stu - well remembered

Interesting thread I can't honestly remember how many scopes I've owned since my first one nearly 40 years ago. I guess it must be somewhere between 30-40 with practically all the design types represented. I can cover the ones that I currently own though: - Vixen ED102SS. I wanted a portable, quality refractor that would handle high power and show a wide field of view and this nice little F/6.5 Vixen came up from an SGL member. I've owned it 13 years now but it dates from around 6 years earlier than that. The ED102SS was not made in large numbers and did not have a long production run. I've rarely seen them for sale since I picked mine up. At F/6.5 it is a very versatile scope and despite being an ED doublet rather than a triplet, false colour is very well contained and the objective has an excellent figure and polish so star images are crisp and clean. Vixen know how to make a good objective lens. - Skywatcher ED120. The Vixen above got me hooked on ED doublet views so I wanted more of that. The ED120 was another purchase from another SGL member probably around 8 years ago now. It is one of the original gold / cream colour scheme ones. It came with a William Optics crayford fitted but I've since changed that for a Moonlite craydord. Super optics in this example - competes with much more expensive scopes I've now found. When I bought this I did have thoughts about this becoming my only scope because it combined reasonably generous aperture with a high quality objective. I was not immune to aperture fever though - see below ! - Orion Optics 12 inch F/5.3 dobsonian. I bought this as an optical tube for a bargain price considering what they cost new. I'd owned 8 and 10 inch dobs and a 12 inch Meade Lightbridge. I parted with the Meade because of it's weight but I missed the aperture. My original plan was to buy an Orion Optics dobsonian mount but my SGL friend Moonshane offered to build be a dob base in the same style but made of good quality plywood. That worked out very well and the dob turned out as light as a chinese 10 inch dob but with the optical clout of one of Orion Optics better quality primary mirrors. Best scope that I've owned really in terms of being able to show me things that I'd not seen before and things that I had seen before, with more detail than ever before. - Takahashi FC-100DL. Back in 2016 I inherited a sum of money with no strings attached. I decided that I wanted to own a top flight refractor and the recently released Tak FC-100DL seemed to offer something a little different from the faster Vixen and my 1st taste of fluorite optics. Takahashi have made 2 production runs of the FC-100DL each limited to 100 units worldwide. Mine was the last unit that was available in the UK from the first run. The only scope that I currently have that I bought new. a couple of decades back I had lusted for a Vixen 102 fluorite but it was way out of my price range back then. I reckon the Tak FC-100DL is the modern incarnation of the Vixen FL. Absolutely no false colour on any target and able to deliver top quality images at magnifications well above what is considered "normal" for a 3.9 inch telescope. - TMB/LZOS 130mm F/9.2 Triplet. What was going to be one top end refractor became two in 2016 when this German built with Russian optics 5.1 inch refractor came on the market within 30 miles of where I live. I put in an offer and soon was able to travel down to the Somerset Levels to collect the scope from it's former owner, who had owned it from new. What attracted me to this scope were the reports that I had read of these LZOS made triplet objectives and the connection with the great optical designer Thomas M Back who sadly passed away at a very young age in 2007, the year after my scope had been made. APM in Germany handled the build of these refractors and production levels are even lower than the Tak FC-100DL. I believe around 120 have been made to date during a 14 year production run. Mine is #20. It's a long, heavy scope and challenges most mounts but the image quality is truly superb. The LZOS triplet objective is completely free of false colour and, like the Tak FC-100DL soaks up high magnification effortlessly. So thats my lot, currently. One largish dob and 4 quality refractors. I count myself very lucky to be able to own and use these quality telescopes. When I started out with my 1960's Tasco 60mm refractor I would never have dreamed that I would be able to have these gems at my disposal Of the other scopes that I've owned over the years that have stood out: - A 6 inch F/6 UK made Astro Systems newtonian that I put on a crude DIY dobsonian mount. My first "proper" scope after the 60mm Tasco. Showed me Halleys Comet in 1986 and I was glad that I had it - the comet was pretty underwhelming visually despite its fame ! - A Vixen SP102M achromat refractor on the Super Polaris mount with the original Skysensor GOTO system. - A Skywatcher Evostar 150mm F/8 achromat (I've owned 3 of these actually) but fitted with a Chromacor CA and SA corrector which delivered performance close to an ED doublet. That gave me a taste for what ED doublets could do but I wanted that performance without the faff that the Chromacor entailed. - A stock Skywatcher Skyliner 200P dobsonian. Bought from FLO as an "open box" bargain. Great all round performer and probably the best "bang for the buck" of any scope that I have owned. - A 1990's USA made Celestron C8 Plus. Great optics and showed me some of the best views of Saturn that I've ever seen through a scope. The scope did have a bit of the infamous mirror flop though. - A lovely Russian Intes 150 F/6 maksutov-newtonian. Super, apo refractor-like images. Rather a heavy tube for the aperture but cracking optical quality like most Russian optics. - A massive Istar 150mm F/12 achromat refractor. I dreamed of being like a victorian astronomer, on the end of a traditional, long, large aperture refractor. The Istar ticked those boxes alright but finding a mount for the beast was a huge undertaking. It deserved a permanent observatory type mounting really but I could not oblige, unfortunately.

You have made some good choices there Adam There is a sort of domino effect with eyepieces I've found. You get a nice one to see what they have to offer and then rather quickly get hooked and find yourself wanting to move the others to the same standard.