RichieP

Yes, but will it open the pod bay doors when asked?

My wife seems to agree with this!

You can use that to mount a camera on top of the scope

Richard

I would avoid the AZ3 mount. I had one and hated it. It struggled with an Startravel 102, let alone at ST120. Maybe an AZ4 would be a better bet?

Apparently a small solar flare occurred today 

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/new-sunspots-herald-increased-solar-activity-cycle-sdo

Perhaps some sunspots to follow 

Here is my Meade AR5, given a new lease of life as a white light solar rig.

Here is my Bosma MC6

Orion 12 x 63 Mini Giants - I think they are great but I don't know anybody else who has them.

Also 10*40 Olympus roof prism which are much lighter but not great for Astro work.

Yes, the diagonal sits between the scope and the eyepiece and puts the eyepiece at a comfortable viewing angle.

These sort of scopes often came with Huygens eyepieces (often indicated by an H preceding the focal length e.g. H20) This is a very basic design dating back hundreds of years which suffers from poor eye relief (i.e. how close you have to have your eyeball to the eyepiece) , false colour and narrow fields of view. Even cheap Plossl eyepieces would be a considerable step up.

Without knowing what specific eyepieces you have it's difficult to comment. There were some very good quality 0.925" eyepieces made, but there were an awful lot of basic, low quality eyepieces made as well. I know you mentioned that the ones you have are replacements, but the ones which originally came with my Prinz Astral 400 were rubbish. I upgraded to some 1.25 Plossl eyepieces and it made a big difference.

If you did want to upgrade your eyepieces, there is a vastly larger range of 1.25" eyepieces available, so an adapter/diagonal would give you that choice.

Richard

I would go for the 0.925" to 1.25" diagonal rather than tbe adapter.

I bought an adapter for my Prinz Astral 400 but, owing to the short focus travel of the scope, I found that I couldn't focus on anything further away than the back of the garden. Despite getting some very nice views of next door's cat I had to saw an inch off the end of the telescope tube in order to focus on the heavens.

Richard