How Much Would You Expect To Pay For ST102 mm Accessories

[gordyb]

Like a 2" Diagonal,2"mm wide angle eyepieces,correct image diagonal for daytime use,filters 2nd hand or any other upgrades i would need Thanks gordy

[JamesF]

Prices for those sorts of items vary massively depending on quality. You can probably get an unbranded 2" diagonal for less than £50, or a high quality one for several hundred.

Personally I'd probably leave the diagonal for the moment and go for a decent moon filter (assuming you want to look at the moon) and some better eyepieces. If your skies are fairly light polluted you may want to look at a filter to help with that, but I know nothing about them because it's not a problem I have.

James

[gordyb]

james i notice you have the ST80,ST102 and the ST120,how do you find all 3 scopes and the differences between them thanks gordy

[JamesF]

The ST80 was new, and my first scope. It's a good little scope and I spent a lot of time with it hunting Messier objects. Where it really didn't do well as far as I was concerned was on the moon and planets. It just isn't up to high levels of magnification without chromatic aberration becoming very noticeable. In terms of build quality the focuser felt rather cheap and had a certain amount of slop that I wasn't entirely happy with, but it was possible to get rid of most of it with a bit of minor fettling.

My ST102 is one of the blue ones (I bought it second hand) and is now mostly used by my son. I found a big difference in performance between it and the ST80 in terms of the ease of finding DSOs, but it does still suffer from the same CA issues (and the same problems with the focuser, to a lesser extent). I was very happy with it though, and probably wouldn't have gone back to the ST80. The main reason I've kept the ST80 is that I plan to use it as a guidescope at some point.

Compared with the smaller scopes the ST120 is huge. The other two would live on my EQ1 mount, but the ST120 needs something bigger (I currently swap it between an AZ3 and EQ3-2). Mine is still fairly new and I've not had as much use out of it as the other two yet, but it's been a pleasure to do so. It's still (just) convenient to grab and get outside at a few moments notice, and great for DSO hunting. The CA doesn't seem as bad, but perhaps that's partly down to me not feeling the need to use such high magnification (I can do that with other scopes now). The focuser also feels much improved. It's certainly my favourite of the three.

I think the ST80 is generally sold as a "beginner's" scope, but I'm not sure it's perhaps not a good enough all-rounder to qualify for that. On the other hand, look what the early astronomers did with kit that wouldn't even get close.

James