a question for a beginner

[singlespeedman]

When I decided I wanted to look at the stars (when fishing but now whenever I can) with more than my glasses I went out and purchased a little 70mm national geographic telescope. Now that was fine for about a week until I realised I wanted more power.

With my fishing kit (c.a.r.p. , coarse, fly and shore) already having cost an arm and a leg I wanted a telescope that I could use to learn and still want to keep as I moved on (to a Skymaster 250p or 300p Dob) in time and finances. I also wanted scope I could move around as the dob seems to be one I would leave sat in the garden for home sessions due to size. (point is coming...)

So after a little deliberation I purchased a Celestron 127eq as it has a little room to be upgraded with new focusers, finders, tripods and motor kits - plus was also around the right price point and in stock. I am pretty happy with the Celestron (4mm useless lens and 3x barlow aside) and have purchased a better 15mm lens, a better 9mm lens and a better than **** 2x barlow alone with a moon filter and a red dot finder. (almost to the point...).

Now I have also noticed there is a camera mount on the 127 eq and I was wondering if there would be any advantage to mounting the National Geographic 70mm telescope to the mount and leaving it always set up with a 20mm lens. I have notice some very nice setups in the galleries with what seem to be two full blown telescopes hooked up together and would hate for the really cheap purchase to have gone totally to waste and it would be good if I can use it in conjunction with the more powerful Celestron.

Any ideas / tips appreciated.

edit - here is what I mean

[brantuk]

The purpose of having two scopes together is usually for imaging. Both have a camera attached and one is used to take the pictures whilst the other is used to film a star near to the object being snapped (a guide star).

Any movements in the guide star are fed back to the mount and adjustments made to keep the imaging camera on the object being shot. This can be done either directly from guiding camera to the mount, or via software on a computer.

Hope that helps

[JamesM]

Your 70mm scope looks like it has a prism type diagonal that will show an erect image. I would think that in the longer term, when you upgraded your main scope to one a little larger, that the small refractor would make a good finder scope as most of there apertures are more in the 50mm/60mm. Would be useful to use when aligning the main scope during any GOTO procedure.

To be honest, the refractor's cost is relatively small and so its use can be easily traded off against occasional use. It's when people spend a lot of money on a particular bit of kit and then find they don't have any use for kit, where their only compensation is to resell it at a big discount - that's the one to avoid. I think you've done the sensible thing and started slowly to get yourself bedded in and to give yourself time to plan the next increment, which I would recommend you buying used gear being cheaper and where you can sell it for what you bought it for!

James