Travel scope + goto to compliment my 12" dob

[nicks90]

Hi all,

With my 40th birthday coming up, I'm interested in a bit of a do-it-all travel scope for my birthday present and need some advice.

At the moment I am more than happy with my auto-tracking skywatcher 12" collapsable dob, but there are a few limitations I would like to rectify!

It wont fit in my caravan!

Living in a light polluted town, to get any real use I have to travel, my dob is absolutely fine for that and fits in my car no problems. But it just wont physically go in the caravan / wont go in the car with all the cobber and dogs and kids etc when I go on holidays. As I spend nearly 6 weeks a year plus many weekends in the caravan, not taking a scope with me to all those lovely places with dark skies absolutely kills me!!!!!

So I am after a relatively cheap travel scope setup to take away with me and also to have a dual use of being able to stick my camera on it.

I'm not in to serious AP and the budget is limited, so I was thinking of starting the criteria as a sky watcher goto alt-az mount.

Why this mount? its simple and cheap and as it comes with the AZ goto handset, I can plug the handset in to my dob and make it goto!!!! oh yessssssss!

Plus it should be fine with my 20mm and 135mm lenses for 30 second exposures at dark sites before field rotation ruins everything.

So with that SW AZ goto mount as the base - what half decent (and fairly cheap) scope can I fit on it?

More than happy to fettle the tripod to stiffen it all up, even modifying a big surveyors tripod to put the mount on if needed - so what scope can I reasonably expect to work on it?

1) Would a startravel 120 work? or am I really limited to the ST 102mm?

2) Do both these scope accept 2" eps so I can use my expanding 2" eps for some serious low power widefield viewing

3) will a star travel manage x200 mag for the odd planetary viewing

4) I have a baader neodymium filter for reducing LP in my dob, would that work as a CA killer on a fast frac?

can you recommend any other scopes I should consider for this mount?

thanks

Nick

[nmoushon]

Can you post a link to the exact mount you are thinking of? There are several goto SW alt/az mounts.

[Hyperion76]

mak 127 nice and compact only drawback is slow cool, loads second hand for sale on eBay ,love mine

[ddtwelve12]

nick ever thought about strapping the 12" to the seats in the caravan ?

[nicks90]

Can you post a link to the exact mount you are thinking of? There are several goto SW alt/az mounts.

This is the one i am thinking of, been reliably told the goto handset will work on my dob, so i can have my cake and eat it!

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-mounts/skywatcher-az-goto-mount.html

nick ever thought about strapping the 12" to the seats in the caravan ?

Its not the tube, its the base! Physically can't get it through the doors or window and I'm not taking it to bits. Too complicated with the motor on the base etc.

[damnut]

Hi Nick,

I have the ST120 as my grab&go scope. Bulletproof, goes on the back seat,roof box or boot. Impervious to snow, sand & dog slobber!!!. Great aperture has a 2" diag and use all the ep's I have with my other scopes.. It does suffer with a little ca on bright objects, but that is far outweighed by its ability with dso's. If you do feel the need use a fringe killer or semi apo, but I don't as it seems pointless to spend 50% of the cost of the scope on a filter.

I also use it almost like a big finder on a triple mount on a skytee II. WIde angle 30mm robert is your mothers brother!

Oh BTW there is a ST120 on sale in the classifieds from Moonshane, this will be immaculate and it is at £130.