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Cheap small scope for the weekend ?

knobby

By knobby
in The Astro Lounge

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knobby

knobby

Posted
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I'm going camping in Oxfordshire in a few weeks (its a music festival) and the Mrs fancies the idea of taking a scope for the kids ( even grown up ones) to have a peak through in the small hours !

Ive checked Stellariun and Jupiter should be up around 1 ish.

Now i'm all for this but i'm going round in circles deciding what to do ! I've seen a couple of ETX 70s for about £80 - 90 which i could buy and then sell on after. BUT I keep thinking that Jupiter will be a dot in a 'cheap small scope'

I cant possibly take my 250 dob , not with 3 people, 3 days of food / drink and a tent / various camping gizmo's ( could leave the wife and kids at home i suppose !) :grin:

Any suggestions,

I suppose i could take a gamble and pay more for something better but still small and hope to sell it after

Guess I'm looking at maybe a Skywatcher heritage 130 dob ...

HELP ... please :confused:

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carlc

carlc

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A lot of people do like their Heritage dobs.

At least you wouldn't have to get a tripod (and at that price range - scope and tripod for £100 or so - it could be rather wobbly).

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mdstuart

mdstuart

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Well the scope is best for wide field targets so clusters like M35 36 37 38 etc. .You can pick up the brighter 30 galaxies or so such as M51 M 81 M 82 etc....Some doubles are fab such as Albeiro and the one in the dolphin..

Jupiter....well the moons are easy the disk is a reasonable size with the 6mm eyepiece I have so you can see the two main bands...but not much more...

I would say its good but basic...A 130mm dob would show much more with the extra mirror size but the Celestron is much smaller so I suppose it depends on how much luggage you can take. For example the dob would not fit in a bag that would go on a Ryanair plane etc.

Mark

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DirkSteele

DirkSteele

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Not that I would want to dissuade you from one of the small travelscope refractors as they are nice little scopes exactly for that purpose, but If you are someone who is use to the completely false colour free performance of a Newtonian type telescope, you may find the bright colour fringing around objects like Jupiter detract from the view.

Something to be mindful of...

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brantuk

brantuk

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I reckon a 130P Heritage dob would either get broken or pinched at a music festival (or covered in mud lol). But if you can find a quiet pitch out of the affray it might be worth the effort. If it were me I'd just take some time off from astronomy and enjoy the music, the vibes and the atmosphere - after head banging in the crush at the front all day you ain't gonna be up to a night time session anyway lol. :)

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boabsta

boabsta

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Ive used a 70etx and cant complain about the views. Crisp and clear. Saturn was impressive through it as was jupiter.

Not too much detail but enough for when we were begining and like you said, you can always sell it on afterwards as they seem pretty static on prices atm and if your getting for less than 100 then it will help pay for the weekend away when it is sold on. Its also fairly small and easy to store and even comes with its own rucksak.

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boabsta

boabsta

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Now your asking lol. Im still new to this but If I remember correctly it did have a 6mm ep and a 20mm.

A quick giggle search is saying they ship with 4mm, 12mm and 20mm for max of 262x and prsctical of 140x.

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Naemeth

Naemeth

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The Heritage is a great scope, it's just bulky and may be awkward to carry with camping equipment and food etc.

This is a difficult one, because often cheap scopes have poor mounts, and Dobs tend to be bulky...

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boabsta

boabsta

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Loving the giggle search!

So 140 x then. ''' 5mm barlowed?

I dont think it would be wise to barlow the 5mm. Might be a tad much for it. Also supposed to have a barlow built in but we never worked that one out lol

Maybe it was barlowed all along? It was the 3rd scope we had tried and still never realy knew anything but loved the view it gave. Was a bit noisey when slewing tho so dont know if other campers will like that noise at silly a.m.

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knobby

knobby

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Leave her there to enjoy the terrible music by herself!! Come to Witney and come out with the Witney crew! We're nearly all prog heads :)

Sounds good! Supposed to be spending time with my real family, not the sgl family.

Maybe I could forget the scope and you could pop one of yours along at 1 in the morning :rolleyes: the music might have stopped by then!

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Paulb3098

Paulb3098

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I've just pick up a Startravel 80 table top (strange little EQ mount) to take on my hol's, not had any chance to view at night (nothing new there), did manage a quick view at sun spots yesterday and the view was OK, up to the usual Skywatcher standard. Nice thing is it comes with carry bag and which measures 16" x 8" x 8".

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knobby

knobby

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Sounds interesting ... it's really just to show anyone interested Jupiter, the wife's told a load of people that we'll bring our scope ... they all said yeah we'll love that. I said ' its a 10" 4' long dob love ... where are we going to put the kids and he tent ..

Etc.:huh:

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