Ricochet

Personally, I would start my eyepiece collection by choosing something in the region of 2-2.5X the focal ratio, so a 20-25mm eyepiece. Then I would move in steps of ~1.41, which will lead to a doubling or halving of brightness depending on which way you go and is what your brain notices as "steps" in brightness. This would give you something in the region of 14-18mm for your second eyepiece and then 10-12.5 for the next. Where this falls down is for Lunar/Planetary where you will want a whole range of focal lengths so that you can adjust for what the atmosphere will allow on any given night. As you've already got the 25mm you could keep that for now and consider that maybe in future you replace it with a 24,, 68° eyepiece (i.e the Explore Scientific or TeleVue). That would mean you're looking for roughly 17.5mm and 12.5mm eyepieces as your next steps up, both of which are available in the Baader Morpheus range if you do decide you want to spend your budget at this time on a single eyepiece. Optically, these are better than the cheaper ones you are considering and they also have a bit more eye relief, which will make them more comfortable if you do have to wear your glasses. I've tried my 25mm BSTs with glasses and they're just about usable, but my glasses touch the rubber eyecup in its lowest position so a touch more eye relief is preferable if you do wear glasses.

Possibly too much magnification. a 6mm will yield a 1mm exit pupil so you're at the point where the airy disk will start dimming stars.

That's interesting. Perhaps they changed the design. You could always email Bresser if you like, they're pretty good at responding to emails. So long as both tabs are on the inside or outside I imagine it's ok, it's when you get one with a tab on the inside and one on the outside that you would be in trouble!

I've looked through the 8x40 Olympus DPS-1 and was surprised at just how good they were, but I believe that @BinocularSky rates the Opticrons as a better binocular, and if anyone knows about astronomical binoculars, it's him. Personally, i would also lean towards the Opticrons simply on the basis that they are a lighter binocular, and should be slightly easier to hand-hold for extended periods.

In a system where the options are 20/25mm and 10mm the 10mm will give the higher magnification. Also, the OP has stated his telescope comes with a 1.25", 9mm Plossl and a 2", 38mm 60° eyepiece.

The base plate holding the focuser to the tube has four little grub screws in the sides (2 2mm and 2 1.5mm possibly) that hold the focuser to the tube. If you slacken those off a little bit you can rotate the focuser so that the wheels are horizontal when the scope is a 45°. This is a lot nicer to use through all the possible angles in my opinion. More importantly, you need to adjust the tube rings and altitude bearings. It is better to have the rings so that the tightening screws are on top. This way you can loosen and retighten them in the field if you want to adjust the balance (e.g. for when you are using binoviewers vs single eyepieces). Also, notice the altitude bearings have little plastic tabs at the bottom. These should be on the inside of the rocker box (but it might not make much of a difference).

I have no experience with your exact scope but one thing to look out for is that you are not tightening the tension too much. If you do this then there is initially some resistance to you moving it, but then a "jump" once it does start moving. It is better to slacken off the resistance a little so that you can move the scope smoothly if this is the case. This sounds to me like your biggest problem is your eye positioning. A more expensive eyepiece might help a little, but I think it is more likely that you are the issue and to fix that you need practice. The first thing that I would do is to get hold of some sort of adjustable height chair, I use a drummer's stool, as I think that you are much more stable when sitting and therefore it is easier to hold your head steady. The second thing is to get your dob out in the daytime, and starting with your 38mm eyepiece, just practice putting your head to the eyepiece so that you can see the full field of view. The full field of view will be an illuminated circle, with a solid black area around it. There should be a sharp change from bright to dark and you would expect the image to be contained in a perfect circle. If the change from light to dark is somewhat fuzzy, then it is likely that you do not have your eye the correct distance away from the lens, although this can also be a design fault in some eyepieces. If there are large black patches within the circle, this is because your eye is not in the right position and you will need to adjust it. Unless you can aim on something very far in the distance, it is unlikely that you will be able to focus on any target (the closer it is, the further out the eyepiece will need to be), but this does not matter. All you want to do is to hold your head away from the eyepiece, so that you can see the bright spot that is the exit pupil, and then move your head forward until that bright spot fills your eye and you can see the field of view properly. Repeat this until it starts to be come a natural thing and then you will find it much easier. Once you can do it with the 38mm, move on to the 9mm. The 9mm will be harder as the exit pupil will be smaller (the same for any 9mm eyepiece in your scope), but also because the eye relief, the distance between your eye and the top of the lens, is much smaller (it will be in the region of 6mm for a 9mm Plossl).

Given you are mostly looking for distant terrestrial views and planetary/lunar astronomy, I would suggest that instead of any of these you look at a small Maksutov telescope. This will give you CA-free views and the smaller size will be less prone to the wind that you worry about. For instance Bresser offer both 90mm and 100mm options and you can also buy their nano mount separately. However, you do not have to stick to one brand. The vixen dovetail is universal so you could buy a Skywatcher Maksutov and put it on the Bresser nano mount or put one of the Bresser scopes onto a Skywatcher AZ5.

If you look at the listing on the Bresser website, you will see both the 8" and 10" dobs have 10 year warranties. 8" dob, about a year or so ago.

Yes, Bresser. The whole OTA had to go back.

If it is a barlow then the distance will affect the magnification factor. With a telextender this is not the case. However, a 2" barlow and 2" eyepieces are very heavy items. Unless you only have very wide angle eyepieces, e.g. 100°, where the whole set is in the 2" format, I would not consider a 2" barlow for a second. You will be better off getting mid range eyepieces (in terms of magnification) in a 1.25" fitting and then a 1.25" barlow for some or all of your high powers.

Probably, but given the choice between keeping the 10 year warranty and having a slightly better handle, I would suggest keeping the warranty (speaking from experience). Put a proper ad in the for sale section. Someone will probably buy it (once we're out of lockdown and collection is a possibility).

After a while it becomes second nature to nudge the telescope to keep things in view. If you walk away and come back later you will have to start over so in that situation an EQ mount is a bit easier, if you have semi accurately polar aligned it. Generally speaking, everything moves left to right, with some up or down movement, depending on where it is in the sky (but it appears as right to left, due to being flipped by the mirrors). Planets probably, because you take a very quick video and combine video frames to make a single image. Galaxies no, as those require long exposures and a mount capable of accurately tracking the apparent movement across the sky. None of the mounts supplied with your suggested telescopes fit that bill, so I would completely ignore the idea of DSO photography when choosing a scope. Choosing an eq2 mounted scope with the misguided belief that you can use it for astrophotography will surely lead to disappointment. Generally, yes. The standard minimum suggested mount for starting astrophotography is the HEQ5, to give you an idea of costs. Heavier will naturally be more difficult, but I find that the 8" is at the limit of what I can carry for a short distance all as one unit. You can always carry the base and telescope separately if you find it is too much weight as one unit.

Mirrors out, somewhere safe where they can't get damaged. I just removed the finder plate under the focuser, and used one of the holes to fit a drawer pull knob. If the surface you are putting it on protrudes up into the base so that it is actually resting on the collimation knobs then it is possible that will affect the collimation. I lay mine down if I have to move the parts separately, but I have the smaller 8", so I can carry scope and base as one unit. Alternatively, if you aren't tightening up the collimation knobs quite tightly enough perhaps there is some movement just from you altering the position of the telescope. If the primary is losing collimation, perhaps a whole turn on all three knobs will pull it tighter against the springs so that it holds better. The third possibility is that things aren't consistent on removing and reinserting the cheshire. Try collimating, removing the cheshire and then reinserting it and checking whether the collimation still looks ok.

This suggests to me that you are not actually pointing your telescope at the moon. Instead, you are pointing your telescope near the moon and seeing some sort of internal reflection off the insides of your telescope. When you point your telescope at the moon you will see exactly the same phase as you see when looking up at in the sky. To correct this, the first thing that you should do is to try to align your finderscope in the daytime. Put your telescope somewhere where you can see far into the distance and centre the telescope on the furthest object that you can see and easily identify when you're not looking through the telescope. Use your highest focal length eyepiece for this. Next, adjust the adjustment knobs on the finderscope/rdf so that it is also pointing at that same object you can see through the eyepiece. Your telescope should now be reasonably well aligned, but you may still need to manually scan around a bit to find the moon the next time you use the telescope at night. Once you have properly found the moon, you can use it to dial in your finderscope. With regards to magnification, you find it by dividing the focal length of your telescope by the focal length of the eyepiece. This means that your eyepiece with the highest focal length printed on it has the lowest magnification, and the one with the shortest focal length has the highest magnification. When attempting to find things I would always start with the lowest magnification. However, if your 32 and 40mm eyepieces are Plossls, they will actually show the same amount of sky so it will not matter which of these you use as a finder.

Put the Telrad on the far side of the finder, that's how I've got mine set up. You want a RACI finder set up so that you can move easily between that and your eyepiece. The Telrad is just for the initial star hops after which it is RACI and eyepiece.

Reportedly, the current model is shipped with a 2"-1.25" adaptor that is threaded to take 2" filters. This means that you can buy 2" UHC and OIII filters, and use them with both your 2" and 1.25" eyepieces. For planetary and lunar you only want a neodymium filter, which could be either size, and possibly a couple of polarising filters, 1.25" on the eyepiece and 2" in the adaptor, so that you can turn the eyepiece to adjust the brightness. The reason for 2" eyepieces existing is to allow wider fields of view that the barrel of a 1.25" eyepiece would impede. This means that generally speaking, 2" eyepieces are limited to long focal length, wide field of view eyepieces. However, there are also some short focal length, wide field of view eyepieces that are fitted with a 2" barrel as they are very heavy and the 2" fitting is possibly more secure.

Of the three I think the 130 is going to be the best all round scope. If you have a sturdy table outside then a scope that would be even easier to take from indoors to out would be The Skywatcher Heritage 130p.

That is because "Stellarium Mobile Sky Map" is not Stellarium, nor made by the same people who make the computer Stellarium. I use Sky Safari Plus.

I agree with @Cornelius Varley. The heavy, expensive camera on the end of the cheap, plastic focuser is a concern. I am not an imager but my suggestion would be to: Buy the book Making Every Photon Count Buy a wedge for the AZ GTi, and upgrade the firmware to enable EQ mode. Remove the Heritage 130p from the equation and mount the camera directly to the AZ GTi, using whatever lenses you already own for it.

How recently? Is it recent enough that you can still return it for a refund? The reason that I ask is that you've already spent somewhere in the region of £150 for a telescope with a mount that you know from the outset is not good enough. You're planning to upgrade the mount, and @John has given the most reasonable options, which will cost you another £170-£180. Your planned spend on this setup is over £300, but at the end of the day you will still only have a Powerseeker 114. If you were to spend all of that money at once now, you could buy a Skyliner 200p Dob or an Explorer 150p on either of the mounts John suggested, any of which will give superior views on all objects.

What is your budget for upgrading the eyepieces? When I was in a similar I started by adding 8mm and 12mm Starguiders. At the longer focal lengths you need to start looking at ES68° eyepieces to get the same quality.

Astrophotography is a bit of a dark art and once a telescope is set up for photography people tend not to make the sort of adjustments required for using it as a visual instrument. In reality it's a one or the other choice. For your wife, or for you? What does your wife want for a gift and if it is a telescope, what does she want to do with it? You can't just chuck a camera on your wife's visual scope for a quick photograph while she's popped back inside for a cup of tea. If you buy her a gift, but she can't use it because it's set up for you to do photography, then sounds like a very quick way to have an ex-wife. For astrophotography? Triple it, and then you have a chance at buying a beginner set up, hence the reason that you have been advised to buy a cheaper, visual scope.

If you can stretch your budget to get the Skyliner 150p then I would recommend that. If you can't (which is fine), then in addition to the two 130p's previously suggested, there is the Starquest 130p which may be the successor to the EQ2 130p suggested above. Which is actually the better mount in use I cannot say though, there's probably not a wrong answer.

Before mine failed, I had never heard of a failure and I have no hesitation in continuing to use them. In regards to what might be a more common issue of one that has seized after a long time left in the locked position, I would recommend unlocking and relocking regularly. Great news. Check it is now working properly on something cheap, like a standard 2"-1.25" reducer before reclamping on the coma corrector.