mr_belowski

my niece got a cheap 72mm short Celestron refactor on a basic alz-az mount / tripod and she *loves* it. It gives reasonable views but more importantly (for a 6 year old) it looks like a real telescope and she wants to use it and enjoys using it

the aperture change from 114 to 130 won't make a huge difference but don't assume that aperture size is the only difference between a manufacturer's 130mm and 114mm offering it's probably worth taking some time to read around the various guides here and elsewhere to get a feel for the many options. In a light polluted area you'll only really see solar system objects (moon & planets) so take this into consideration

finding stuff is fun and part of the magic, but having a mount that can track makes it much better for sharing - without it you get Saturn all nicely lined up and by the time the kid's settled at the scope and figured out which eye to use it's drifted out of view. A simple tracking mount takes away this urgency and makes it much easier to show things to others. I bought a 90mm Mak-Cass on a Skywatcher Virtuoso tracking mount and my 9 year old *loved* it

half way through a night trying to sleep in your car I'm fairly certain you'll be seriously considering a tent & sleeping bag

I sacrificed some space in the car to fit in my smaller telescope for this years trip to the Llyn peninsular, hoping for dark skies and a couple of clear nights, In the end I think I spotted a fuzzy moon twice in 2 weeks. Could have used the space for something useful. Been a frustrating few weeks

that's sensational

looking forward to seeing your results here, any sneak previews / preliminary findings available?

I did try with a bolt through the middle to add some tension / vertical load to the bearing but it made it a bit sticky. I think it needs some proper friction material

Mine's on a lazy susan (8 inch dob), done by the previous owner, and it doesn't have a clutch or a brake and is a pain. Smooth, but unless I stuff my plastic mobile phone case into the gap it wanders around all over the place. Don't skimp on the brake / clutch

focus it on the moon then leave the focuser alone and point it at Venus - surely that should just work?

wow, that's brill

ah, maybe it's the 18mm, it's languishing in the bottom of a drawer

i got the 16mm and maybe it's a personal thing, but it's only 'ok' for me

Mine's a basic Vixen 30mm NPL. No idea why but it just seems to work better than any others I've tried - it's all a bit subjective and personal

watched exactly the same event after dinner with my 11 year old daughter, Jupiter was a real treat this evening and exceptionally sharp

I got the 18mm and was pretty unimpressed with it. I think each eyepiece in the range is different so they're not directly comparible but I wouldn't be a rush to get the 18 (although everyone's eyes are different so maybe it's a personal thing). My 8inch aperture / 1200mm focal length dob works well down to about an 8mm. Anything shorter / higher magnification tends to be a bit awkward - even when the seeing is OK the constant faff to keep stuff in view tends to limit how well you can view stuff because there's no time to allow the scope and your brain to 'settle'. The moon is the exception to that. Considered a decent zoom? The baader Hyperion 8-24 was (last time i checked) on offer at FLO and is very highly regarded

i went through a similar process last year, buying a scope for my 10 year old daughter, looking at similar options. We ended up with a Skywatcher 90mm Mak on a Virtuoso mount. It provides nice views of solar system objects and star clusters. With such a small aperture we don't miss a go-to mount - faint DSOs are too dim for such a small aperture from a suburban back garden. Finding brighter objects isn't difficult with all the other tools available. Having the mount track, however, is surprisingly useful. When her friends are there, we can line it up on Saturn for example and they can all take turns to look without me having to constantly move the scope to keep the target in view. It also makes it much easier to view targets at higher magnifications. I ended up getting an 8 inch Dob as well, and the two complement each other nicely.

As a bit of a lurker here, I don't see any eliteism at all. I see folks spending wildly different amounts of money on a shared passion, all willing to offer up their advice, enthusiasm and experiences. To me at least, it seems like the very opposite of eliteism and it's incredibly refreshing to see. On the subject of how expensive it is, again I see a wealth of relatively cheap / affordable observing equipment and the usual technological improvements in imaging equipment making stuff more accessible, not less accessible. Sure, the recent supply chain issues don't help but over all it looks to me (as a relative newbie) that things are moving in a healthy direction One real issue is the ever-expanding light pollution that makes astronomy harder and harder for those living in cities and suburbs, which I suppose can end up making it more expensive / less accessible

i got an Astronomik UHC filter for my 8inch Dob. Under Bortle 6(ish) skies it's a bit of a disappointment - obviously i need to fix my expectations but in the conditions I've tried it in, it's not really worth the money

ooo, i like the look of the split pupil finder, i'll have to have a rummage around for a suitable old lens

Hopefully it'll at least kind of work, I know a telrad or Rigel or similar is the proper solution but I do like an occasional bodge

Having recently bought a nice 8 inch Dobsonian and a right angle finder (9x50), I've been enjoying the ever-so-brief clear spells and getting more familiar with the night sky. I'm happy with a manual mount and there's no shortage of reference material and tools to help navigate the night sky, but does anyone else find it a pain to get the scope pointing in approximately the right direction? With a RACI finder it's surprisingly awkward to get thing pointing in the right patch of sky, especially for stuff up at the zenith. As I often find myselt looking along the side of the finder scope trying to work out if I'm even in the right ballpark before bothering to look through it, I wondered if it would help to make some kind of crude alignment sight like this, think it'll work?

if you go for the 200p dob, you might need to budget for a right-angled finder (RACI or Telrad). Using the straight one is a right pain

The Virtuoso mount tracks. You set your longitude (or lat, I can never remember which way round they are) once, when you first configure it. After that you just ensure it's fairly level and is pointing to Polaris when you switch the mount on. For the remainder of the session it will do a decent job of keeping objects in view. It has clutches for the 2 axis so you can loosen them and swing the scope round and up and down, then when you tighten them it will keep whatever you're looking at in view. It's not perfect and can be a bit puzzling at first but once you work it out it makes life a lot easier. Those 'ooo' moments looking at Saturn on good nights with fairly high magnification are made much easier if the scope can keep it in view for you while you all take turns at the eye piece. For my thinly veiled attempts to convince the missus that my purchase is for my daughter, this has been a very useful feature and (IMO) is definitely worth considering. Getting a nice view of something cool only to have if drift out of view by the time someone else gets to the view piece is annoying as hell. Also don't assume that visually dull targets can't create 'wow' moments. The fuzzy grey blob of our nearest galactic neighbour really astonished my 12 year old son - sometimes kids just 'get it' and the thrill of experiencing the very photons that started their journey millions of years ago isn't always lost on them

that's really nice It never ceases to amaze me what can be achieved with astro photography. I love to just sit at the eye piece and gaze but pics like this are just magical