Alfian

Yup, I had the Tal1 too. A heavy, and typically over engineered piece of russian hardware but optically very decent. By modern standards the focuser is a bit agricultural but quite usable and a proper r&p with no plastic! Curiously Tal reflectors are left handed which is different. I think the Tal2 has a motorised mount which is also of a vintage design. As well as ensuring all optics are good the electrics need to be in good order. From the photos it looks to be in very clean original condition so if the price is right it could be a nice and quite interesting buy. Worth mentioning that with the pedestal mount and tube assembly it will be heavy and something to consider in terms of moving it around. As an additional thought, the finder scope which is a very good too, is the wrong way round which makes me wonder whether the seller is into astronomy. Might be interesting to find out its history.

No, not yet, but live in hope at some point. I live in south west Scotland. Good skies but less of a chance aurora wise than way way way up north in the NW Highlands and beyond. AstroBuySell is a good source for used stuff too.

It might be stating the obvious, but in terms of budget had you considered buying second hand equipment? Many people here, myself included, have or have had much used 'scopes, eyepieces, etc in their astro' arsenal. The budget goes much further this way and astronomers do tend to look after their equipment. I've never had any regrets. On the geography, "where is Derby" question, I originally hail from Northamptonshire but have spent much of my life in Yorkshire. In the latter, I was seen by most as a southerner. I came to the conclusion that anywhere north of Watford and south of Sheffield fell into a large no mans land, unknown and generally avoided by folks north and south unless circumstance demanded, in which case it was down to the satnav to provide the knowledge. My dear departed mum used to talk to me as if Yorkshire was just south of the arctic circle. Now I live in Scotland I think I must be spitting distance from the north pole. Way way up north. (Currently nicely warm with blue skies and very pleasant)

I'm a visual astronomer only, not into imaging at all, made my mind up early on that I wasn't going down that avenue. The easier DSOs seen either with binoculars or a small scope will be little more than grey smudges. Darker skies, better seeing, better optics, more aperture may gain better definition and some detail but will never match that which are shown in the kind of images seen on line and in books and magazines. The satisfaction, well for me anyway, is appreciating just what is that is being revealed live through the eyepiece into the consciousness. M31, no matter how well or poorly the "smudge" is revealed, will always be a wondrous sight to behold.

Thank you for a very interesting "road test" of these filters, and some interesting comments too. I tried a Fringe Killer in a 80mm F.7.5 achromat. I thought I could see some very subtle improvement in discerning finer luna features, within reason for an F7.5 80mm, the yellowish tint was something I couldn't live with. I've seen good comments about the contrast booster, some people are very positive, and have been tempted to give a try on the ST120 and the Tal 100R although the latter is pretty nice as it is.

Hi Andy, and another welcome - from an ex-Northants resident.

Good to hear all is as "normal" as possible. Keep well you guys.

The Tal1 is a very nice telescope with good optics IF its in good condition ie mirrors, mechanics and cosmetics. They are built to last. Check that the focuser will take a 1.25" eyepiece, earlier Tal 1s used their own slightly different format and you were stuck with Tal eyepieces good though they may be. If it is a 1.25" focuser check for smoothness and adjustability. Despite being typically over engineered they can be heavy. When you say a Tal1 telescope I am assuming its the whole OTA and mount. Check the equatorial mount axes for play. They run just a plain sleeve type bearing. Mine had a little bit of play which in practice doesn't make much if any difference such is the solid stability of the mount. If all is good and its been well looked after I reckon, considering what the scope is capable off I reckon £60 is worth the price, less is very much a bargain. Despite being just 110mm and having a f7.3 spherical mirror when most everything else is parabolic a good Tal1 will give a remarkably good account of itself. My experience is visual only - can't comment on imaging.

The Skymax 102 is twice the focal length of the Heritage flextube 130 f5 so it will give half the field of view for any given eyepiece. The Skymax is very good for Luna and planetary views and brighter dso's are doable with good use of a decent finder. With respect to some dso's the Heritage would be better and the extra aperture helps. I had a Heritage 130 for a while and for all its simplicity (the helical focuser I ultimately found frustrating even though it works adequately) it performs surprisingly well. The Mak's build is very different, small, very portable but chunky and solid and for me has a nice feel to it. The two scopes are quite different but in the end they both deliver well enough.

Yes, fair enough John, but it had crossed my mind that if quality control was an issue then it might apply to other scopes.

Another thought is a 90 or 102 Mak. Smallish fov but cracking little scopes that will mount easily on a photo' type setup.

If that's the case my 90mm is one of the better ones.

I have the Opticstar AR90 f5.5 which sadly I don't think is sold anymore, but its a well made and good looking scope with quite a decent focuser. As you would expect there is some CA but its not objectionable (at f5.5) and it makes for a good grab n' go scope and gives some nice wide field views and Luna is better than you would expect. As a travel scope its pretty bullet proof - which helps.

That's a useful link John. Some work has gone into compiling that table.

A tricky one. Appearances are just skin deep and defining what a human should look like is a minefield I'd prefer not to walk into. However behaviour might be a pointer. What constitutes civilised behaviour, even allowing plenty of elbow room for differing opinions, may offer better clues. If "uncivilised" behaviour is an indicator to non-human presence, then Helen Sharman may have a point, in fact world wide infiltration looks certain.😉

In the Lancashire/Yorkshire Pennine borders with all the wind, rain, hail etc colour isn't always a useful guide.

I've visited Bacup a good many times and a couple of friends are from the town. In all the times in or around there I have to say the people I met were mostly humanoid.

No No not at all, no connection at all, just that I don't go in for haggling much. I offer stuff at a reasonable price and likewise I don't quibble with others who sell equipment at reasonable prices.

Perhaps this is where I have, on odd occasion, gone wrong. I've forgotten to add "no offers". 😉

Not too much to add to above. Most of my gear is second hand and has been good and I've sold good items at about the 60% price mark. Fair play both ways. There have been items I have tried to sell but have had no takers even though its been a good item at a more than fair price. Perhaps the market sometimes gets swamped by too many bargains when there is less money around. I have had items for sale and have had, frankly, insulting offers which I've politely (only just) refused. I'd rather keep an item than sell it for stupid money. On the other hand I have occasionally given an item to a worthy cause rather undersell it to somone who I suspect would resell it for profit. To put that into perspective though, I have found the vast majority of fellow astro' enthusiasts I've bought and sold from/to have been a pleasure to deal with and frequently the transaction is just the catalyst for ongoing chats about astronomy. Good and honourable people.

Perhaps its personal preference. I'm not very tolerant of vibes that take more than a smidge to settle.

I suspect you might be right with respect to the 150p. It seems to go that where a range of scopes are offered on a particular mount, by the time you get to the largest/heaviest scope in the range it is under mounted. That was certainly the case on my 130EQ on the CG3 (EQ2) which is better mounted on an EQ3/2.

Hi Paul, yes its hard to fight the urge to see what's going on. Have a good xmas - the Vixen still hasn't had an outing but we'll get there soon!

Yep, the Maks dont lend themselves so well to being recollimated but I've had/got a total of four 90 -127 all of which have been fine out of the box. They are sturdy scopes and unless they are treat badly or dropped its unlikely they will lose alignment. Reflectors tend not to be quite so bullet proof but both my 130 and 150 f5s once collimatecd only needed the barest tweak of the primary to stay sweet. I suspect having a non collimatable primary is more a cost saving exercise than one to do with weight. On a scope as small as the 114p the weight increase with a (preferable imo) proper collimatable cell shouldn't make any difference mount wise.

I'd had a couple of f5 reflectors some time before I bought the 114p and even though collimating them was no big deal I never really got on with them. I bought the 114p mainly as I was interested with Avant mount that it came with and had no expectation that the scope would be anything more than so so. Collimation wise I was also a little dubious as its one of the new generation of reflectors with fixed primaries. How wrong could I be. On arrival the collimation was spot on and even when I flocked the top part of the ota, which meant removing the spider and secondary, it was still easy to just tweak the secondary back that smidge just to get it bang on. For low to medium power use it works pretty well and so compact for the money its nor a bad little scope. However all that said, just to repeat my earlier comments given the choice, and acknowledging the basic differences, I would still choose the 90 Mak.