bosun21

That was my first telescope as well! I can remember my dad taking me to the Charles Frank shop in Glasgow cross looking for my Xmas present. That must have been 1967-68. Memories 🤔

My most used eyepiece is my Baader Morpheus 17.5mm, closely followed by my Explore Scientific 24mm 68 degrees. The clarity of the Morpheus draws me in every time.

Hi 👋, a warm welcome to SGL

I would also go for the 80ED as the extra 20mm aperture will pay dividends for visual observing. The FPL51 glass should be fine just as @Louis D has stated apart from maybe high magnification. If the little chromatic aberration bothers you then you can use either a contrast booster or semi apo filter to subjugate it.

DPD dropped off a new Baader SkySurfer V, a digital multimeter for those days when things go wrong and my long awaited replacement Zeiss microbayonet from Baader for my Maxbright II binoviewer

Same excellent clarity with a tad less brightness.

Another plus vote for the 127 Mak. I have both the Mak and an 8” SL dobsonian. Both are extremely capable planetary scopes. I also have a 120/1000 Evostar with a 2” semi apo filter permanently in the diagonal. This also fares relatively well on the planets. For resolution the dobsonian wins out and for contrast my 102 apo refractor wins out.

That 12.5mm will keep on itching until you scratch it😊

Hi David 👋 welcome to the lounge

If you go to the top right hand corner with the three horizontal bars, this opens a drop down menu. Select browse then gallery HTH Ian

For your Maksutov 105 I would definitely go for the 8mm for planets and the moon. The 12mm would give you 100x whereas the 8mm will give you 150x which is a decent magnification for the planets (seeing dependent)

Have you tried the semi apo filter or the contrast booster filter? This helped a great deal in eliminating the CA

Postie dropped off a hand warmer for those cold winter fingers. Also a 12mm Starguider for my grandson who has caught the astro bug.

NICE!

He was talking about putting the whole telescope in a bag, base included.

Neither of these two telescopes are telescopes that you put into a bag to carry. They are basically made of two parts. The base itself which gets its name from an American monk named John Dobson, and the telescope tube itself. Where do you intend to use the telescope?, The handle on the Celestron tube is to assist with removing/assembling the telescope to its base. A handle can be fitted yourself to other makes, although it is not in the middle due to the heavy mirror. Cleaning of the mirrors isn’t necessary with normal usage unless it gets heavily soiled by pollen etc. Then it can be cleaned in tepid water with a few drops of soap liquid, pure cotton balls and rinsed with distilled water. I advise watching a video on YouTube showing this. Collimation is the word which refers to the correct alignment of the mirrors. It isn’t inbuilt as such, but the means and screws etc with which to adjust the collimation is part of the telescope. If you want to be guided by an app on your phone then you should be looking at the Celestron Starsense explorer range of dobsonians as they have a mount/mirror unit for your phone to enable this. Once you have found your target, it’s a simple matter of nudging the telescope to keep the target in the field of view. However this becomes more frequent as the magnification increases. After buying the telescope all that’s needed to start observing the night sky are a couple of eyepieces. Good luck 👍

It wasn’t me that outbid you @Zermelo . I was looking at the 12.5mm on eBay from the same seller though, but decided not to bother.

Hi, I bought it from Dew Control 👇

Postie dropped off a couple of BST Starguider 15mm that I want to try in my binoviewer. I also bought a dew heater for my Telrad. At present I have 2x 26mm Vixen silvertop plossl’s, 2x Morpheus 17.5mm, 2x BCO’s 18mm and now the Starguiders. I am unsure how short of a focal length would be best for the planets. I guess it’s trial and error.

Yes I know, I’ve now purchased the missing cable. Bye the way, Morpheus eyepieces can be addictive. It caused me to buy the whole range and the storage case. Worth every penny.

I have ended up buying the Orion Dynamo Lithium power pack from FLO to go with my Celestron LiFePo I already had. Considering the amount of nights I get to observe with the weather, it will be a while before I make a considerable dent in their charging cycles.

Postman dropped off my new dew 4 channel controller, 4 dew heater bands and a few cables. After all this I have just realized that I forgot the most important cable doh! 🙄

If you don’t want to go the dobsonian route for whichever reason, be it you want tracking to allow AP, or just the physical size is too large then an SCT would meet your requirements. The images from an SCT are great and if you want a wider field then you have the option of using a reducer. I have a dobsonian and a Maksutov as well as a refractor as each have their niche in visual astronomy. A lot depends on how serious you are about doing AP. If serious then an EQ mount is advised, and if less so and you just want to snap a few pictures then an ALT/AZ go to would suffice. Don’t be put off getting a SCT as they can be great scopes. Good luck with whichever avenue you take.

How would one go about determining what value of thermistor is required to offer protection? Thanks

It says the talent cell is only rated at 2A maximum