Roy Challen

Personally, I wouldn't bother. In the UK the Tal 1 is regarded a decent scope but is easily obtainable for around £50 or even less - I acquired the one I had for free and passed it on for free too. If I had kept it and wanted to upgrade, I'd likely have bought a motorized EQ5 second hand.

When I first joined, I thought @Johnwas the founder due to the number of posts he made😄. Additionally, SGL is one of only six websites I have permanently bookmarked, and the only 'social media' I can bring myself to care about.

This is how I feel about Venus. I saw a feature that matches a small part of your sketch. It was actually quite obvious to me, so I assumed it must be some distortion in the eyepiece or our atmosphere, or even a suspiciously stationary floater. I was using my FS60-CB and a solar continuum filter! The view was super sharp and not as dim I thought it would be 😄

It would likely not be a bolt on fit, however if the worm gear on the RA axis of the GP is the same as my mount, I see no reason why it wouldn't work.

Like this one Mike? It really is very good, but often I don't bother with it, it adds quite a bit of weight 😀. Silent in use and certainly accurate enough for even high mag visual use, runs on regular batteries as well as mains.

The long oval crater 2/3rds up is Schiller, nice pic.

Agree with the above, also don't know what the lower peak is😀 I use Phillips moon map.

A good alternative to a long achro is the Maksutov. Near-apochromatic views, compact tube, don't really have to worry about collimation, excellent for planets and moon. Not expensive. Downsides? Slightly narrow field of view, but not much difference from a long refractor, might take a bit longer to cool. Swings and roundabouts for all types of telescope. Have you given any thought to what you want to observe?

Only you can decide that. It's different for everyone. I had a Tal 100RS - a 100/1000 achro refractor. Personally, I thought it was very good, others may disagree. Only way to know for sure is to try for yourself.

Modern Pentax bins are very good, I had a pair of 12x50 SPs. Are they as good as Zeiss bins? Probably not, but Zeiss are much more expensive.

Absolutely right! As a beginner, you want to look at everything, however no scope does it all. If you want to look at the sun in hydrogen alpha, you'll need a refractor. To look at the faintest galaxies hundreds of millions of light years away, a huge dob is best. It is cheaper to obtain good performance in a reflector, however a high quality refractor is able to provide equally pleasing views albeit at a likely higher price point. As such, most visual astronomers have at least two telescopes, usually of different types.

Excellent capture, so rare to see colour, let alone enough to id the airline

If he knew it was coming, could we please, please have a bit more warning? 😜

Like most, I get floaters too. However, I noticed a strange thing last night whilst looking at the moon. I was using my Skylight, which gives very small exit pupils at high mags. Between about x140 to x250 the floaters are apparent and mildly annoying, but past x300 up to x390 ( I was using my zoom plus x2.25 barlow) they all but disappeared. Obviously the view wasn't the sharpest, but it was ok and there were no floaters. Exit pupil at x390 is 0.19mm! 😄 As it turned out, the best view with minimal floaters was at about x125.

f/100, that would be fun! That would make it 7.6 metres in length😄 It is a very good white light and lunar scope, not so good for stars and DSOs. Very conveniently, it has the same tube diameter as my FS60, hence it fits the cradle you see in the pic.

Very good seeing over here, managed to resolve three peaks, four during still moments, using my Skylight. Also like the shadows from the Alpes and Piton, nice features.

For them, or your lawn? 😄

He must have sent Mrs Stu to the lawnmower people...😄

You've seen it many times before, but here is my Skylight this morning. Seeing was terrible so I went for a walk. Now I see that @Peter Drew has spotted a huge outburst when I am at least an hour from home 😄

8x21 pocket bins + 90mm dewshield with homemade Baader film filter Bins set to my IPD inside the dewshield, I can easily see all the named ARs with no seeing issues 🙂

My FS60-CB shows CA around Venus, as others have said, it's more likely to be atmospheric dispersion, maybe a bit of both. This is with a mirror diagonal. It's actually not much better than my long achro, with the added disadvantage of shorter focal length making high mag viewing more difficult. Same scope shows virtually colour free image of the moon.

Thanks for the kind comments, congrats to the other winners, the standard of submissions was very high and I really enjoyed participating. Looking forward to the next one😊

That's great! If someone said to me to try that, I would have been pretty sceptical. Good result.

Correct. Not TAA, Тал in lower case. To the OP, it's a good telescope, I had one and enjoyed it very much

I don't have a quark, but I do have a Solarscout. No issues with power in the two and a half years I've had it. If there were no issues before you sold it, then I would suggest that it must be a fault with either the cable of the new owner; or, something happened during shipping. I would check that the socket on the quark is free of debris, that the cable is rated for at least 1.4 amps, and that the battery/supply is fully charged. Also, is the owner aware that it takes a few minutes before anything meaningful can be seen through a quark?