Just a quick one...

[Mansnake]

Hi Guys,

After a few good nights doing some back garden observing with my bins, i feel a case of aperture fever coming on!.

Im interested in a skywatcher startravel 120 as i prefer to look at Nebula, galaxies and clusters. I was just wondering if anyone has a ST120 and what they are like.

Also is there anyway of fitting it to an synscan alt/az mount ?

Cheers

Clear skies !

[ronin]

The 120 is bigger so will collect more light but it still isn't that big for DSO's, so not sure if the view will improve to show all thethings you say, also many DSO's are small and you need the light collection to enable magnification. The 120 Startravel is a short focal length so magnification is not so good for magnification.

Basically be sure you know the limitations of the ST 120, it is however bigger the the binoculars in your signature, and a 120mm dia is a reasonable size. Clusters will be good, suspect galaxies will not (really just M31 is big and bright) and nebula again M42 others maybe not.

I doubt it will fit on a Alt/Az, basically too big/heavy/long. I see that the 102 is sold on the mount not the 120.

The ST's all show CA on bright objects, they are short f/5 achro's, so if/when you point it at Jupiter, Saturn The Moon expect some.

[John]

For a portable scope with decent deep sky object potential a good alternative would be a Skywatcher or Celestron 150mm F/5 newtonian on an alt-azimuth mount like the Skywatcher AZ-4. Under dark skies at the SGL star party a couple of us using scopes of this type managed to spot loads of galaxies and other deep sky objects.

With the right eyepieces they can produce good views of the moon and planets too and don't suffer from the chromatic aberration that the short tube refractors do.

[rowan46]

I agree it will not fit on a synscan alt az mount and neither does it have the apparture for a good look at dso's. You would be better off with a dob if you need apparture at a good price. The skywatcher 200p springs to mind.

[Mansnake]

hmm cheers for your input guys. I ideally need something that will track objects as i want to play with webcams eventually. I do like dobs but the synscan models get expensive even second hand. I think it will have to be the 150mm newt instead then.

Thanks

[Catweazel]

The 150P would pretty much cover all of your bases, from what you have said