Louis D

Try poking around the bins at a home improvement store to see what sorts of angle brackets and mending straps they have. With some nuts and bolts to connect everything and a nice heavy ankle weight on the end, you should be able to MacGyver something together for under $20 like the first link.

I did something similar for my daughter's 127 Mak, except I just wrapped bubble wrap around the whole thing, so it has about 3 inches of protection on all sides. The finder is in bubble wrap in a side pocket, as are the other accessories. It's also nice because it doesn't look expensive sitting in the back of her open SUV at a public campsite like an aluminum or Pelican case would.

If you can get a good view to the south, Orion is loaded with open clusters as well as the namesake nebula. If you can go low enough in power (15x or lower), Collinder 70 surrounds the belt stars and is quite a surprise if you've only ever looked at those stars at higher powers. It's a case of you can't see the forest for the trees. I also like small clusters directly adjacent to the nebula.

Then an 8" Dob, probably the Bresser 200p, would be your best bang for the buck. You might never feel the need to go bigger for observing.

It's also taking longer to unload shipping containers due to the backup of ships at many ports due to short-staffing of dock workers due to C-19.

Alright, back to the title subject. It depends on your observing conditions. Can you just walk out your backdoor and start observing or do you need to haul it up or down many stairs? Does it need to fit in a car, a backpack, or on public transit? There's not much in stock anywhere, but the top contenders tend to be various 6" or 8" Dobs, the 130 or 150 SW Heritage scopes, or the 130P and 130P-DS scopes on various mounts.

Can you confirm the Svbony doesn't have the WO style constrictor ring at the bottom of the eyepiece holder as seen below:

Those look more like Synta diagonals, such as the WOs that have the nasty constriction ring in the bottom you noted: GSO diagonals look like these: GSO 1.25" 90-deg 99% Dielectric Mirror Diagonal with Compression Ring: GSO 2" 90-deg 99% Dielectric Mirror Diagonal for Refractors: Notice also the 2" to 1.25" adapter. This is a hallmark of many GSO 2" products.

So do I now that I've knocked it off a couple of times. ☺️

There was very little signal in the red channel to work with, so I think your DSLR's built-in UV/IR filter is being too aggressive and is clipping the H-alpha line as shown below: Compare my results with your image versus one taken with a QHY168C camera in this thread: Notice how much more red channel signal I was able to dredge up from the before image in the after image. Before: After: You may want to get your DSLR astro-modded to make it full spectrum if you want to dedicate it to astrophotography.

We'll have to see if astro gear pricing moves like car prices, ever upward, or like gas (petrol) prices, wildly up and down.

I'm seeing used prices on many CN classifieds matching new prices from 5 to 10 years ago, and they're still being marked as sold within days. The US is also starting to see the effect of 25% additional tariffs on Chinese sourced goods. Thus, I expect to see used prices matching new prices from 2018/2019 in the very near future.

I messed around with it in my ancient copy of Photoshop Elements and came up with the following:

Back on topic, I would recommend a 2x Barlow simply because I've found them to be more usable on more occasions than 3x Barlows. I can't remember the last time I used my 3x Barlow. It got so little use, I retired it to a box of little used astro accessories. As for the type, the GSO 1.25" 3- element 2.5X APO Barlow lens is affordable and well regarded. Most reports peg its actual magnification at around 2.1x to 2.2x. It's also sold as Apertura, TPO, TS Optics and Revelation Astro. I've read @John much prefers the Baader 2.25x Q-Turret barlow, so I would defer to him on this point. My personal favorite is the 1990s Meade 4000 140 APO 2x Barlow. It's also a three element design. However, it has a removable optics section that can be threaded onto eyepieces for lower magnifications of around 1.6x. I've measured it to be closer to 2.4x when used as designed. They come up quite often here in the US on the astro classifieds for $40 to $50. They might show up second hand on your side of the pond as well.

I'm a bit of a contrarian on the ST-80. I say just avoid them. I've had one for 20+ years, and have hardly ever used it due to the excessive CA (chromatic aberration) and SA (spherical aberration). Views through it are highly unsatisfying. I would highly recommend a 72ED on an alt-az mount instead. The wide views are astoundingly sharp and satisfying through them. They are also extremely compact and relatively light. I really love that they come with 2" focusers for extremely wide views. They allow you to see the sky in an entirely different way from your 8" Newt. If you trend toward higher power viewing, I would recommend a 127 Mak. They can be mounted on the same mount class as the 72EDs, so you can swap them depending on your observing mood.

However, I've noticed that when binoviewing, lightly tapping my Dob's tube at high power can sometimes allow me to recognize fine details more easily for the same reason it is easier to see a camouflaged animal in motion than when still. It spuriously kicks-in my brain's motion processing centers.

I was thinking the same thing. Bresser is sure to follow with a price increase in the near future. C-19 in general has lead to rapidly increasing prices for both durable and non-durable goods across the board. However, I have yet to hear of it being flagged as a concern by the media or politicians.

I might have missed it being recommended above, but I highly recommend getting a bottom cap/cover for the tube. It's surprising how much dust can drift onto the mirror from the gaps around it at the bottom end of the tube.

That's wild it doesn't come with a 2" to 1.25" reducer. I had assumed they came standard with all ED/APO refractors. Both of my ED/APO refractors (AT27ED and TS 90mm APO) both came with them. It shouldn't be a big deal to locate an aftermarket adapter. Just make sure it is robust enough to resist the torquing of an eyepiece in a 1.25" diagonal. This means you'll want a decently long 1.25" sleeve inside the adapter. I've tried using a 2" to 1.25" adapter from a 2" diagonal for this, but it wasn't really up to the task.

Just remember to always put the fluid on the cloth, not the object to be cleaned. It can wick around the edges and get to inaccessible surfaces.

The QuikFinder will pop off if you catch it on the door frame while carrying the scope out. Being so light, it will just clatter harmless to the ground. How do I know this? I've done it a few times. The Telrad is quite firmly attached with screws to the base and won't come off if caught on a door frame. It is robust enough, though, that I've yet to have it break because of it. I use both. I prefer the Telrad when space on the scope allows it because the circles are thicker, easier to acquire, and go out to 4 degrees. The QuikFinder circles are really thin, can be a pain to locate in the window, and only go out to 2 degrees. However, it's really the only good option for small scopes.

I mainly use my zooms in my binoviewer because it's a pain to swap two eyepieces instead of one and to make sure each is seated square to the holder so the images will merge properly. In the central 50% of the view, most zooms perform about as well as Starguiders in my recollection. It's at the edges that they start to lose out a bit on clarity. That, and the field stop is sharp only around the middle of the range. It grows slightly fuzzy toward both ends. Not everyone is bothered by this, though. In a binoviewer, you can't really look too far off axis without losing one or the other view, so that lack of absolute outer field clarity and field stop sharpness is in peripheral vision anyway.

If you're on a budget, I would recommend the BST Starguiders, especially at the 5mm to 12mm focal lengths. They have good eye relief, good correction even in faster scopes, and a 60 degree apparent field of view. For zooms, either the 7.2-21.5mm or 8-24mm varieties are fine.

There are other options such as DSCs and even manual setting circles for finding objects in bright skies. Gotos are fine once they're aligned, but too many beginners are put off by the difficulty of some (older) systems. There are newer ones that align themselves using plate solving, which is terrific for beginners. The problem is, how to get a newbie into a decent sized telescope with plate solving goto for under $200 to $300 (the typical beginner budget). It's a different discussion when their budget is $2000.

At 5 pounds, it doesn't seem that bad. My DSV-1 weighs just about the same, and I consider it fairly light weight. My DSV-2B at 9 pounds feels considerably heavier. I would agree that the 127 Maks are good for light weight, compact setups. I've got one and I bought one for my daughter for her camping trips. The scope and all the gear fit in a gym duffel bag. The mount and tripod fit in a long tripod/light stand bag. The Synta 127s are really only 118mm in clear aperture, so the OP might want to look at the Bresser/ES 127 which is supposed to accurately rated. The advantage of the Synta Maks over the Bresser/ES Maks is that they show up regularly in the classifieds for $200 to $300, at least here in the US. Here's @Geoff Lister's posting about putting an entire 127 Mak and goto mount into a backpack minus the tripod: I've repeated the image below: To reduce weight, but not sacrifice rigidity, the AZ5's tripod could be replaced with a carbon fiber photo tripod. It would also dampen vibrations better than metal as well.