Roy Challen

Pm'd

Some tough ones there, Stu. I'm going with Mare Marginis for the first arrow. Pass on the others for the mo, although I think Mike might be correct about Kastner.

After reading the threads on here about this scope, and having read my own white light reports from a few years back, I decided that along with lunar and planetary observing, I should also add the sun to that list. So, I thought about what I needed to do that. It had to be Ha, and it had to be light weight. As far as I can tell, the Daystar is the most affordable way in to Ha observing, so I put my order in. I teamed that up with the Skywatcher Solarquest mount which seems pretty popular, and put that on a Three-Legged-Thing carbon tripod. I carried the whole lot in one hand easily into t

HaHaHaHa! No, really! Ha, as in Hydrogen-alpha! The postman brought me a nice new diagonal, a solarquest mount, a Three-Legged-Thing punky tripod.....and a Daystar SolarScout 60mm Ha telescope. Bits and bobs arrived during the week, had first light this morning. I'm seriously impressed!

Looks superb, great colour choice.

I thought you said gratuitous?

Nice! My kind of telescope.

It's so long and spindly! Had a half-hour session on the moon this evening with the Skylight. Had it on its original mount on top of a Horizon tripod. It's a bit wobbly but not too bad. Needs some adjustments to make it better, but it's a lot lighter than the Tak mount so it gets used! The views were fantastic, btw.

Tal stopped making telescopes a few years ago. Definitely old school, good quality but nothing fancy. Good achromatic lenses though, I'm certainly happy with mine. They do come up for sale every now and again, usually for not much money (mine was £110 posted back 2015). Put one on an AZ4/5 and you have a lightweight, portable 4" setup that performs well, that shouldn't be anywhere near approaching your budget. But I suppose the same could be said of the Evostar.

Luckily, the TAL 100RS lens cap has a removable centre section 30mm in diameter turning f/10 into f/33. I've never even tried it, should be good for lunar and solar.

Unusual focuser arrangement. Is that yours @vlaiv?

My Mum was Japanese, so I've been there several times. Last time was on honeymoon in 2012. Didn't see the Tak shop but did see the annular eclipse from Kyoto - my avatar was taken then.

I don't know much about this mount but have a look through this thread from CN https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/446507-takahashi-em-10em-11-mounts/ It does look nice and I reckon it'll do the job.

I wish I was, light pollution round here is really bad.

Dual purpose map reading - for finding dark sites, and for knowing your way round the sky. And weather-watcher!