Mikea

I don't think you can get it text book perfect - I can't remember why for the minute....what OTA is it?

Now you have to tell us what camera you used! 😃

Great image of M42!

Unfortunately - confusion is often the way to start! You have to prioritise what is most important and then compromise. You seem to want everything - ( don't we all) - and of course you'll never get it in one package!!

Personally , I will say don't go for a manual mount. Alt-Az is easier to figure than EQ, but once you've set an EQ mount up a few times, you'll wonder what all the fuss was about. Whichever, you want GOTO!

I would hold off on the photography kick if you can for now.

Reflectors will gather more light for a given weight if portability is important and a larger aperture is always better.

Don't be put off by second-hand although the current virus stay at home thingy makes that awkward. If you can find a decent scope on an EQ5 PRO mount, that would be ideal, although the mount is quite heavy!

Consider Skywatcher, Meade or Celestron OTAs.

Sorry if I have added to the confusion, but you should be able to pick out some common threads from all the above good advice from everyone. Come back and ask more when you have had time to digest it all.

20 years ago, I didn't have a telescope. Now I have three!

Almaak is very nice.

Also, although not a double, but one of my favourites is the Stargate asterism in Corvus.

If you have a decent car battery charger, I'd use that rather than the built in charger control circuit which, in my opinion, is a bit c**p. I use a Cetek MXS 5.0 (on motorcycle battery mode) to charge mine via the 4mm terminals on the back. Never had a problem. Take no notice of the LEDs!

Having just got my bargain Meade 6000 APO from eBay, I was a little disappointed to find that the mount which had been supplied for the finder scope was in fact the wrong one. The seller was unaware of this because the scope had never actually been set up. Anyway, I rattled off an email to Opticstar late on New Year's Eve and was very surprised to get a reply next day! Peter promised to email me when back in the office on Monday. This he did, having identified the bracket that I needed. I placed an order which was delivered by recorded delivery  on Tuesday 5th. Very pleased with the service I received - especially as I had not even bought the scope from them. Thank you Peter!

Stick all your spare cash in a fixed term ISA for 3 years!

Align scope as normal. Connect to pc running Stellarium - job done!

hey im trying to finde out how much my telescope is worth so i can sell it bt th badge has falen off all i know is that its got revolution 12 written on the side of it its 5 feet tall and sits on a trolly and has a 32mm deep feild lens , would be gratefull for ny feed back thanks

Does it look like this:

Revelation 12" Premium Dobsonian Telescope

How much did you pay for it, what condition is it in....

BTW this should really be posted in Beginners Help as a separate thread

The mount is around three months old, purchased from First Light Optics, so I guess so?

OK - so resist the urge to "tinker" and ask FLO to send it for repair. I had mine fixed within warranty - it came back working perfectly and has done so ever since. I have also done the epoxy mod mentioned by Joe which improves the tripod stability quite dramatically ( I did that AFTER my warranty ran out!)

Are you still within warranty period?

Martin, as a fellow 130P owner, have you noticed whether the handset and Stellarium RA/DEC positions are identical - or not? My handset always reports a slightly different position to Stellarium - only by a few seconds, but I have no idea why it is different. Is it something to do with relative clock settings?

Ignore my idiotic post above: It's all to do with the alignment accuracy. I was checking out the latest version of Stellarium without the Ascom drivers and had not star aligned the scope. So as soon as you move from park (where the positional info does line up) the two systems are out of ...errrrr... alignment!

I have noticed this behaviour on the az motion recently. It seems to be intermittent and doesn't affect the positioning accuracy. I had a peep inside and was quite surprised at the small gauge wiring used from the power connector through to a low-current pcb connector. Having said that, I don't believe it's a volt-drop issue. More likely to be mechanical, but I don't know where - I couldn't see anything obvious