Lost when star hopping

[happy-kat]

I guess it boils down to what is easy to take outside to enable grabbing opportunities to observe and what can be stored.

Have you tried taking your eq outside?

For visual the few DSO I have seen have been small grey smudge and sometime with averted vision. My imagination fills in the rest.

[Naplesnut]

Got to be a small 3-4" refractor here to start off with. No collimation needed & very light to carry (2-3kgs) +mount/ tripod

[ianpwilliams]

Well the ED80 is £300 more than the 130PDS, for what seems to be similar result. And I suspect that the 130PDS might not need all that much maintenance (the 200P didn't need collimating at all when it arrived). And the only refractor option would be the ST80, but that would become redundant once I moved onto the 130PDS. Unless the ST80 could be used on the 130PDS as a finderguider.

[happy-kat]

ST80 people use as guide scopes too.

It would be your lightest option and potentially still usable and can start learn to image with it. So it has CA but how often is the Moon or a planet there to look at. With my good eyepieces hardly any CA to moments of none on Jupiter.

ST102 slightly bigger apperature still pretty light and no fuss.

My ST80 and AZ3 wights around 6 kilos

If you could get to look through so scopes might help you with expectations.

[ianpwilliams]

To be fair I think my expectations visually will remain low, and that my primary aim will be imaging (particularly seeing as I already have the mount), and if I can see anything decent through the scope then that would just be a bonus.

[ianpwilliams]

For visual, I could get the 130PDS and separate AZ3 mount for £260, or the combined 130PDS and AZ4 mount for £344. Is there a big difference between the two?

130PDS:

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/reflectors/skywatcher-explorer-130p-ds-ota.html

AZ3:

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/alt-azimuth/skywatcher-az3-alt-az-mount.html

130PDS + AZ4:

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/reflectors/skywatcher-130p-ds-az4-alt-az-mount.html

[happy-kat]

Weight.

130P-DS OTA is 4 kilos

AZ3 is lighter and perhaps not adequate for a tube as big as the 130P-DS. Best to ask FLO I guess.

AZ4 is heavier the sturdier stainless version is 8.1 kilo I think on google search. The lighter one is less sturdy so would get more vibrations so I guess not so good.

What is preventing you most from using the 200p, the weight of it or the fact it is several trips up and down those stairs?

If the new purchase was lighter bit still several trips up and down stairs would that hinder actually getting out observing?

[ianpwilliams]

Sounds like the 130PDS + AZ4 mount would be the way to go for visual then. If that would weigh 12kg including scope and mount, then that would still be about half the weight of the 200P on its mount.

For imaging, it would be the HEQ5, the 130PDS, camera, guide scope, maybe a laptop etc, so that would be multiple trips up and down stairs, but I would mind that.

As for the 200P, it really is too big and too heavy. I can only just carry it, which means that even one trip up and down the stairs is risky. I totally underestimated just what a mammoth it is.

[happy-kat]

I would suggest checking the weights yourself as I only did a google out of curiousity.

[ianpwilliams]

Actually surely the better option would be the 130PDS OTA purely for imaging on my HEQ5, and the Heritage 130P for grab and go observing. That would give me the same aperture for observing, and it's a cheaper option overall. And I know the Heritage is lightweight. And then I could do observing while imaging.

[ianpwilliams]

Do you know roughly how big the Heritage base is, just to give me an idea of what size table I would need for it?

[LukeSkywatcher]

Do you know roughly how big the Heritage base is, just to give me an idea of what size table I would need for it?

Do you have any kind of outdoor patio table?. If so, the Heritage will very happily sit on it.

[ianpwilliams]

I don't think so. It's a communal garden, so there's the odd child's toy, a couple of swings etc, but no table. So I considered looking for a smallish fold up table.

[happy-kat]

That sounds like a wobble magnet.

What is the ground like it is very uneven or is there a gravel patch to site the base on?

[ianpwilliams]

It's pretty uneven in most places. Technically I have my own area (although I can go anywhere), which has six paving slabs where a shed used to be. I was considering moving them together to form a platform, but with that area being in the corner near a tree, it would only be useful if facing away from the tree.

Maybe I could pay the extra £50 then and get the 150PDS on the AZ4 mount, switching between mounts depending on what I'm doing. The only issue I can see with that is that if it was a choice between devoting time to observing using the AZ4 or imaging using the HEQ5, then I know which one would win. So the AZ4 could become redundant, unless maybe an opportunity came up to do some observing in a dark site, which is doubtful. Which in turn would suggest just getting the 130PDS OTA, just doing imaging, and maybe just mess around with bins or something (although they wobble too much, so even they would need a mount).

[Naplesnut]

It's pretty uneven in most places. Technically I have my own area (although I can go anywhere), which has six paving slabs where a shed used to be. I was considering moving them together to form a platform, but with that area being in the corner near a tree, it would only be useful if facing away from the tree.

Maybe I could pay the extra £50 then and get the 150PDS on the AZ4 mount, switching between mounts depending on what I'm doing. The only issue I can see with that is that if it was a choice between devoting time to observing using the AZ4 or imaging using the HEQ5, then I know which one would win. So the AZ4 could become redundant, unless maybe an opportunity came up to do some observing in a dark site, which is doubtful. Which in turn would suggest just getting the 130PDS OTA, just doing imaging, and maybe just mess around with bins or something (although they wobble too much, so even they would need a mount).

Use a broom inverted as a bino mount

[ianpwilliams]

Yes although I expect that bins would only really mean looking at constellations, which wouldn't hold my interest for too long,

I'm going to see if I can move the paving slabs together today to form a platform. Then the 130PDS on the HEQ5 could go on that, or if using both at once then the HEQ5 could go elsewhere and still be levelled, with the Heritage on a table on the paving slabs.