Evostar 80ed or evostar 120ed

[dmahon]

My £3k would go on:

£520 Equinox 80

£235 TRF-2008

£1350 AZ EQ6-GT

£385 Lodestar

£50 A finderguider

and £500 towards a CCD (mono, plus filterwheel plus OAG)

Or consider BORG 77ED-II - but there's not much room for backfocus after adding adapters.

[Hitesh]

Hmmm I'm actually getting a little bit turned on by the mak-newt my only reservation is collimation, and the single speed focuser

[ollypenrice]

The Mak Newt would be great if you got it into perfect shape but wouldn't be if you didn't... The success rate seems to vary, based on posts. When it's good it's very good and the fast F ratio suits DSLRs, which always perform far better in fast scopes. (Whenever you see a DSLR image that looks like CCD check the F ratio. It's usually in an Epsilon at F2.8!!)

If you are not pulling the rig down and putting it up again you could use the siimply brilliant Penrice-Robinson Tanget Arm Microfocus Do-Dah to transform the single speed focuser. To use the focuser visually you'd need to release the tangent arm screw to get more focus movement for visual use but this gadget is the finest of fine focus devices. Reduction ratio is about 500 to one, at a guess. Half a turn makes the smallest useful focus adjustment. Joking apart, it really works well!

On FL, I have three routinely available, 530, 980 and 2.4 metres. The one that gets the least use is the 980. Too long for many nebulae, not long enough for galaxies...

Olly

And here it is! Heh heh.