ABGD

Well, an update is in order, I think. My heart was set on the Skywatcher 180 but at the last moment I swerved and bought an ex-demonstration Skywatcher Maksutov-Newtonian 190 with a second hand AZ-EQ5. My reasoning was that it would give better deep sky views and still have some of the contrast of a Mak design. I also bought a titchy 90mm mak for £50 and a manual £20 EQ2 mount which I adapted to fit the telescope and a camera tripod I had lying around. I then took it to Canberra in Australia this summer where some of my family lives. I also bought a Televue Ethos 13, Baader Hyperion zoom and some cheap 2.5mm and 4mm plossls. The weather has not been kind to stargazers recently but I have snatched what I consider to be quite fine views of Jupiter and Saturn, with colour, bands and the spot in Jupiter clearly visible. I haven't really enough experience to know how good my views were, but I am happy. I suspect the seeing was quite poor so I am hoping for even better later in the year. In Australia the weather was much better and I managed to catch the Jewel cluster and Ptolemy's cluster and the moon, Jupiter and Saturn but not much else. I quite enjoyed my constellation chasing but I have to admit that the guided mount makes it much easier to find things, particularly as I don't live in a dark sky site. Something I hadn't considered: it also makes it far easier to show other people what you are looking at as there is much less time spent faffing, and the targets are not constantly moving away from the eyepiece. Admittedly a motorised equatorial mount would take care of the last point. My lodger had an outside birthday party on the one clear night so far, and many of his guests seemed thrilled when I set it up and we saw Jupiter and Saturn. Several had skysafari or similar on their phones, but hadn't ever looked through a telescope. I am also very pleased I opted for the AZEQ5 rather than a purely equatorial mount. It's easier to set up in AZ mode and I may yet buy a little telescope to fit on the other side of it. That had been my initial plan for the 90mm but it was left in Canberra. The one drawback of the Mak-Newtownian is that my son can't look into it easily. On the small telescope I loved the zoom eyepiece as when you are searching for things it really helps to be able to zoom in and out. However with the AZEQ mount I find the Televue views noticeably better and I found myself using it much more than the zoom. I used to take a lot of photographs so sadly have already developed an appreciation for expensive glass. I hope it doesn't seem that I have ignored advice given. Perhaps I would have done better with a simple Dobsonian. But it was the advice on this thread that pushed me towards buying a less specialised 'scope. So I was listening. At least a bit. Currently trying to decide on a wide angle eyepiece, though it may not arrive for a while as I have already spent more than budgeted... But I think it was worth it. In the longer term I am thinking of getting into timing occultations. Coming from a (non-astronomical) scientific background I rather enjoy endeavours that make some kind of wider contribution and that strikes me as something that is both accessible and has not yet been eclipsed by Hubble and the superscopes.

Thank you all for the food for thought. Something I should have perhaps mentioned is that my partner and I started grinding mirrors for a large Dobsonian a while before my son was born. We finished a 6" mirror but haven't yet built an assembly for it. We have a 12" which is nearly done and a blank for a 20". Kids are great but tend to slow down megalomaniac projects - or perhaps they are in and of themselves megalomaniac projects - but I think we will restart telescope building probably reasonably soon. My confession is that I will probably enjoy building the telescope at least as much as looking through it. So I was hoping to get something that would compliment a large Dob for when it is built - which realistically isn't likely to be imminent. I talked to a shop today who said the EQ5 mount would be much too small for the 180, which changes matters somewhat as well as a large mount with guidance is more than I'm willing to pay. The 8SE is being sold by Amazon themselves. I suspect it's discounted because it's old technology - RS232 ports etc... Probably clearance. I think they've stopped making them. Even at that price they haven't sold any over the last 2 days.

I'm sorry for retracing what I know is a fairly well trodden path... There are, perhaps, a few twists though. I've always wanted a telescope. My partner used to have a 3" refractor and still misses it. Our son is 6 1/2 and would probably enjoy looking at planets and 'wow' objects but realistically is likely to have limited interest at this stage. He's reasonably interested in space things - 'the Martian' used to be his comfort film (sick in bed, he'd watch it several times in a day). I've settled on a Cassegrain type telescope, because my impression is that you get more for your money than with refractors. I remember being lifted up to look through the eyepiece of a big Newtonian when I was about my son's age. It was a bit awkward and I wouldn't fancy lifting my son for any length of time, so I hoped that something with the eyepiece at the mirror-end of the tube would be easier for him to use. The next question is whether to get a GOTO mount or not? Again, I've tried to learn the constellations before and had limited success. But the cheaper mounts look very plasticky to me. I can see the point in a GOTO mount, but given the apps you have on mobile phones these days, are they as necessary as they used to be? Do you miss out on part of the astronomy experience if you don't learn your way around the sky? If I set up and aligned an equatorial mount with a motor drive, presumably a phone app could give me the co-ordinates to see whichever object I'm interested in? I note I could add a GOTO system for about £300. At the moment I'm split between the Nexstar 8SE which is currently at £1104 on Amazon, or a combination of a SkyWatcher 180 Makutsov, which I understand may be a bit better for planets; decent for most deep-sky objects, and which I can get for about £1000 with an EQ5 mount. I am unlikely to get terribly interested in Astrophotography. I read about Schmidt-Cassegrains being a bit more delicate because of the thinner corrector plate and this pushes me slightly towards the Makutsov, despite the extra weight. Thanks in advance for any thoughts.