Nik271

Welcome to SGL! I'm afraid your budget is too low for tracking but you there are other options. Have a look here for a brief guide. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/beginner-telescopes.html If you are predominantly interested in the Moon and planets then a long focal length refractor or small 4 to 5-inch (Mak/Schmidt )-Cassegrain on a sturdy tripod will be very suitable. Actually you don't need tracking for photography of the moon and planets because they are bright and you can use fast shutter speeds where the movement of the sky does not matter.

It is good thing in terms of energy efficiency. But it will be even better if they switch them off or turn them down after midnight.

You are correct the orange circle is the bright core of Andromeda M31. It is considerably fainter than the Pleiades, you need Bortle 5 skies or better and a moonless night to see it naked eye. Best views will be in binoculars as the galaxy spans 3 degrees, wider area than what your telescopes of 900mm focal length can show. What is the light pollution where you live? This will have the greatest impact on the visibility of M31.

If you live in Bortle 7 then the planets the moon and the brightest DSO are the only option. Don't worrry, this is still plenty. Some form of Goto is essential, especially with kids. I recommend a small to medium size Mak on a Gti, something like this: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/maksutov/sky-watcher-skymax-127-az-gti.html It's an excellent panetary scope which is good for the brighter DSO as well. (A bigger telescope will not help you to see much more in Bortle 7). FLO quotes weight of 7.5 kg in total so very portable for a holiday travel too, and can be carried assembled easily directly from the house to the open sky. The disadvantages are: 1. Maks have slightly longer cooldown time compared to open tube telescopes. if you plan to use them at higher magnification (more than x100). Just give it 20-30 minutes outside for the 127mm model. Low power views are not affected. 2. Some kind of dew shield is needed to stop the corrector plate fogging up. Home made from foam mats work just as well as the branded ones, 3. Narrow field of view, basically up to 1 degree. But note that all solar system objects fit in this. And globular clusters and most open clusters except the Pleiades. Bonus: A Mak with a solar filter is a good solar scope, I use mine a lot this way to watch sunspots daytime. Another advantage of the Gti is that you can also buy a small refractor like the 80ED for widefield view and use the mount with it, if you need it. Anyway, there is no single right or wrong choice, ideally try to look through other people's scopes to make up your mind!

Wow these images make me feel I'm there, floating by the ISS!

Bear in mind that for colour cameras because of the bayer matrix you are sampling at lower resolution: 2 times less for red and blue and about 1.5 times less for green. So in case of colour camera it is better to use at least 1.5 times extra focal ratio than what the theory says about mono. In excellent seeing F20 with 2.9micron pizels in a colour camera should be OK.

Do you have a car? If so north Oxfordshire is the best in terms of LP. Try the Rollright stones. It's on a hill and there is a layby to park next to it. The stones are pretty cool too!

This is science fiction stuff. Theoretricallly it is possible if you have huge resources to put it into orbit and set it up. But then so is the trip to Mars. So is the return of human exploration of the Moon and look where this one is currently, in the slow lane if not on the hard shoulder. At some stage the real world starts to mess up the beautiful dream 😞

Both are nice but I like the second one better, it's closer to a natural look to my eyes.

Very nice! I've always wanted to see this volcano visually, never quite got the seeing conditions at the right time. Perhaps this opposition....

Great stuff! I think I can spot Olympus near the terminator. The promontories of Sinus Gomer are showing very well!

Thanks for the heads up! I managed to observe both this evening at about 7pm. Used my 120mm Mak and the Baader Hyperion 24mm ep. Saturn is tiny at low magnification but the star hops from it to the Saturn nebula were easy despite the mild haze. Some elongation was noticeable on the nebula which became more prominent at 124x with the BST 8mm. It is surprisingly bright, could still see it even when the evening mist obliterated most of the stars naked eye. Finally I ended the session looking at the only object still visible, Jupiter which showed some detail in the main belts. Transparency has been poor lately but we have to take what we can. Planetary nebulae, double stars and of course the planets are my main observing targets. Clear skies!

Some detail on Ganymede too! Fantastic!

I used to own a 150/750 Newtonian from Celestron and it worked well on a EQ3 mount. In my view it's the maximum size for comfortable viewing on a equatorial platform without using stools or ladders. You can rotate the tube in the rings so the eyepiece is at comfortable height. The Bresser seems a good deal, bear in mind the tripod seems a bit shaky. This kind of scope weighs about 5 kilograms and the mount with counterweights also about 5kg, so the legs have to support 10 kilos, doable but there will be some vibrations). But it is good enough to get you started and in the future you can upgrade the tripod and even the mount. I would recommend EQ5 class mount for more solid performance but this is beyond your budget for now, unless you find something on the second hand market.

About the Astromaster 130: I used to own that scope, it was my first 'proper' scope. It was a good deal when it was below 200 GBP with the mount, but at current prices I would not recommend. The main drawback of the Astromaster is that you wont be able to use high magnification, i.e. more than 70-80 times. Its mirror is spherical and it shoud be parabolic for its focal ratio. The scope suffers from spherical aberration which means that not all light gets focused in one point. The starts at high magnification will not be pin points and the detail on the planets will be poor. For DSO though it should be fine, as you don't need high magnification there.

Very nice! I was watching it this morning with a 120mm Mak and Syrtis Major was just about to rotate out of view. There is noticeable brightening near the north pole, also present in your drawing, perhaps a dust storm or haze.

The Tak Epsilon has a secondary with a spider, and no corrector plate.

Wow, this is spectacular. And in 2006 !

I've found that the Plato craterlets show very well near full Moon at high Sun illumination, they are somewhat brighter than the dark floor. In good seeing I've seen A with the 127 Skymax and the main four with the 180 Skymax. Your dob should have no trouble showing them in the right conditions and perhaps even more.

I use the cover for the scope. It's actually a cheap thin BBQ cover which is black on the outside and white on the inside. For solar observing I turn it inside out and drape it over the back end of the scope. The only slight disadvantage is that it gets a bit stuffy inside after a time as the material is not breathable.

A few more easy and spectacular double stars: Albireo, Almach, Eta Cass, Gamma Del, the double-double in Lyra, Polaris. They are visible even in light polluted cities and require only moderate magnification.

Thanks! This seems to be it, indeed this peak has 800-1000 meters difference in height from the rest of the rim walls, and the collapsed section is just next to it.

I was looking at the Moon and Mars through the mist this moring. The seeing was excellent but the Moon was dimmer than usual because of the mist. I went up to x250 with my 127 SW Mak and the view was holding up, just getting a bit too dim. One remarkable thing was the 'church spire shadow' across the flloor of Plato. I dug up the simulated view from SVS at Nasa and it was exactly what I saw: It must be some rock outcrop on the rim casting it. Never seen this before, the Moon always has a surprise for you! Clear skies! Nik

I think light pollution in the atmorphere will be a big limiting factor, even in dark locations the sky is not that dark (mag 22 usually ) and most people live in cities. Where I live the sky is Mag 19, so can't really go very deep. Then there is the issue of calibrating the images with read and thermal noise from different sensors. The BAT is more reasonable, it's trying to do lucky imaging for DSOs, so only short exposures needed. It is not aiming to go deep, but improve imaging DSO resolution to 1 arcsecond and below.

The first question is: what kind of objects you would like to observe? For deep space stuff the Dobs are the best; basically you need a big mirror to collect more light. However if you have a lot of light pollution where you live a big Dob may not be ideal. Simialry if you prefer planetary, then a 4 inch refractor or a 5 inch Mak or SCT could be better choices.