What was your first ever scope and when did you decide to upgrade? And what too?

[SteveNickolls]

My first telescope was a Celestron 9.25" Go-To SCT, once I had my fill of the planets the best upgrade ever were the Helios Apollo 15x70 binoculars. They are set up in minutes, no cool down period, have a lovely FOV for DSO's and readily portable. I learnt the constellations with them and my way around the sky and can see more in one night through them than in months with the SCT. They are great for cutting through the veil of light pollution.

Cheers,
Steve

[nightfisher]

First scope was a star travel 80mm and about six months after getting it upgraded to an OO Europa 200 eq newt, bad move never even saw the moon with that pile of (insert word) and it came close to putting me of astro for good, I chanced a better scope and bought an evostar 120 and that got me hooked

[RichLD]

13 minutes ago, MattJenko said:

A few of the newer members seem to have started on 130m reflectors and I am no different. A Celestron Astromaster 130EQ. This had great views, but rather awkward, so went for the Skywatcher 250px dob. Insta-happiness.

Imaging was the big hop though. ED80 + HEQ5. Now have an AzEQ6 and a TS60ED mini scope.

 

 

Pretty much exactly how it went for me - I still have my Astromaster 130EQ that I cut down to allow focus with a DSLR when I first got my HEQ5. Then I got a SW 200PDS, then the ED80. Still looking for my next upgrade when finances allow though, would you recommend the TS60ED for widefield? I'm currently using a Nikkor ED 180 lens @ f5.6 for HA widefield and would like a little more reach.

[MattJenko]

11 minutes ago, RichLD said:

, would you recommend the TS60ED for widefield?

It is still early days, but so far the signs are encouraging. I will do a formal writeup in next couple of weeks if I get another couple more clear sky sessions under my belt. 260mm focal length with the TS reducer/flattener...

[RichLD]

Just now, MattJenko said:

It is still early days, but so far the signs are encouraging. I will do a formal writeup in next couple of weeks if I get another couple more clear sky sessions under my belt. 260mm focal length with the TS reducer/flattener...

Cheers sir!

[iapa]

1st was Celestron SLT 130 with the Alt-Az goto in Mar 2014

Upgraded to 200PDS in Jan this year. (I have also changed mount twice to AVX, then CGEM-DX)

 

[Pingster]

My first scope was a Celestron 8SE. It was expensive... for my first scope. It looks the business. But sadly living in london inside the M25.... its useless for DSO. I never found starfields staifying in it as the FL is very long. I was bitterly disappointed.

So i upgraded to a 16in Skywatcher flextube and been very happy since. Then i got another 12in flextube and its far better than the 8SE.  

I wished SW would make their ultracompacts in aluminium so they actually would be super light.  

[Peter Drew]

My first telescope was an all plastic 2.5x "Dan Dare" telescope which I "won" in a simple competition in the Eagle comic whilst I was still in short trousers!. Didn't take up astronomy until my early teens so the upgrade was well overdue. Made myself a 50mm refractor followed by a 4" Newtonian and then a 5" refractor and then on and on upwards to a 30" Dob. Bought my first commercially made telescope, a LX200 12" SCT  when I was about 60. Currently I mostly use a 6" refractor PST mod for solar. 

[The Admiral]

Like Peter, I was in short trousers (circa 1950's) when my parents (or was it Father Christmas ) got me my first telescope, as I was interested in astronomy. In those days only a toy or the 'real thing' would have been available, and not being well off, I got the toy one (yeah, I know, we lived in a shoe box...!). It was basically an alt-az mount made out of plastic, with thin wooden dowel legs, a cardboard OTA, a small (~3") plastic mirror, and plastic focuser and eyepiece. Absolute c**p, sadly; it wouldn't focus, but I could get it to by holding the EP out of the focuser, and then I got 3 fuzzy images of the object. It's a wonder it didn't put me off altogether. And of course, in those days there was no such a thing as consumer protection, so it ended up languishing in the back of a cupboard.

A few years later, (and still living in that shoe box), I 'made' a telescope using an old bellows camera, with it's lens as the OG, and a microscope objective as an eyepiece. It worked after a fashion. And I still have SPM's Boys' Book of Astronomy! About this time, I was also lent a small draw-tube terrestrial 'scope, but it can only have been about an inch diameter OG.

So that was over 50 years ago, and my first 'real' 'scope, and currently still, is an Altair Astro 102mm triplet, which I bought last year. About time, eh?

Ian

[Fermenter]

7 hours ago, Roy Challen said:

You'll be upgrading sooner than you think if you leave your tripod that close to the edge of your decking!

Hehe, you like that?  I didn't have much of a choice.  What I was doing there was a quick test of my new solar filter the day before the Mercury transit, and I needed to be in the sunlight.  It was like that for 5 minutes until the Sun dropped below the treeline.  Definitely not something I would normally do.

[xtreemchaos]

my very first scope was given to my by grandfather in 1971, it was 60mm brass frac with spiders inside it, which i upgraded to a tasco 80mm in 1975 i didnt realize it at the time but it was a down grade really because the 60mm was a cooke and i still have it but i bet its got more spiders in because it been in the loft for years, ive also still got the taso up there too. charl. 

[ecuador]

My uncle gave me a "Halleyscope" when I visited him in the US back in '88 and that started my interest in astronomy. It was a Japanese 40mm refractor with a 8x-32x variable zoom on one of those toy camera tripod legs that some entrepreneurial minds apparently sold by the thousands during the comet Halley hype. I bet it would have sucked for comet Halley, but the moon looked great! You couldn't really get anything better in Greece in the 80's (2-4x markup of already expensive stuff you could find in the UK), but the flood of immigrants from the USSR who brought some decent and cheap optics allowed me to get a nice Tal-1 4.3" equatorial reflector a couple of years later (after easily getting the straight As required at school per the father-son agreement). That served me well for several years. I now use mostly a C9.25 and an ED80 either on a portable iOptron ZEQ25 mount. They don't get nearly as much action as either the Tal-1 or the Halleyscope, as I am now in the UK and when I have some free time, the weather disagrees...

[arioch1st]

13 hours ago, Riemann said:

Fabulous mini-shed !

Thanks Riemann.

All of the build materials were scrounged out of skips. The frame was from a built in wardrobe, inner cladding from old pallets, and thw outer cladding old fence panels. The materials for the construction of the  pier was scrounge also, from a bulding site.

[kerrylewis]

I agree regarding the shed. I have been dreaming of something similar. My garden wouldn't take a full size observatory, but a small shed like yours to cover the pier and mount (and perhaps a short scope) would be ideal. I have a vaguely Japanese theme to part of my garden and thought that I could perhaps dress it up in that style! 

I would be interested in some more details of the construction - the wheels and rails for example. I'm conscious that I've rather highjacked a thread about first scopes, so perhaps you could start another elsewhere on the shed topic - if you don't mind sharing the details, of course. 

Thanks

Kerry 

[hjw]

My first scope, some 40 years ago, was a small refractor (I think it was a 70x900mm scope). It was enough to get me interested. At this time, Internet wasn't invented yet and information was hard to come by. When I moved to Australia 20 years later (from Germany) and saw the skies here I decided to get another scope (a 4.5" reflector with 900mm FL). And then, a couple of years ago I started to accumulate the equipment mentioned in my signature. The main driving point actually was the Pentax camera which allowed me to take night shots. I guess deep down astrophotography has always been my aim and after four decades I am where I wanted to be initially. Having the experience now, I also understand where I should be if only I could afford it. But that's another story for another time!

Clear skies

HJ

[Demonperformer]

My answer puts a slightly unusual meaning to the word "upgrade" - my first two scopes were disasters (for me).

1. A 4.5" reflector on an EQ mount that was simply beyond my capabilities, so it got used about once. 2. Sold that and replaced it with a "simple" 250mm dob, which was such a hassle getting in and out of the front door (that was more the 'box' than the OTA) and lacked a decent 'flat' space on which to stand it, so it got used about twice. 3. Sold it and replaced it with an 80ETX, which was small enough to set-up in next to no time, was simple to align (point north, with OTA level) and took me wherever I wanted to go. Got used LOTS, so I consider that to be my first "real" upgrade (from my previous disasters).

After a couple of years, I did do what I guess most people would regard as my first "proper" upgrade. Having learned my lessons from my previous disasters, I did LOTS of research and settled on a 6SE, which was (again) easy to set-up and (with GOTO) enabled me to spend my time observing rather than finding. It gave me several years of excellent service and many happy evenings/mornings out exploring the wonders of the night sky.

Thanks.

[L8-Nite]

On 19/05/2016 at 23:21, Danny83uk said:

So I've been gazing now with my SW Explorer 130/900 for 2years and wondering if it's time to step up to a bigger scope with goto(is that classed as cheating,i just don't know) so my question is: When did you know it was time to invest more into this glorious hobby? And what did you go from and too. 

I'll have to go back in time to my youth. The first telescope I bought myself was a 4 1/2" reflector. This was long before computers and the internet social forums, so changing scopes based on the latest flavour of the month wasn't the norm.  About eight years went by with my interest waxing and waning, and then by chance I came across a Sears 76mm refractor which was my dream scope when I was a kid; so I bought it, and was satisfied until I retired and then got back into the hobby in a big way. I kept both scopes through the years, but recently gave both away; the reflector last year, to a friends daughter, and the refractor to a good friend in Wales.

 

Edit: Here are photo's of both.

[Alien 13]

I started off almost 50 years ago with a 6 inch reflector a Charles Frank jobbie but have gone smaller over the years I now have a 71 mm frac but still would go smaller maybe a 60 mm or better still a 30 mm.

Alan

[Peco4321]

Great thread. 

My parents bought me a horrible department store kids telescope in the early 80's to get me going, which went back to the shop after a few weeks!  Similar to picture 1. Thankfully they then got me an old 3" refractor which did the trick. I sort of gave up on the hobby as I found beer and women but got the old scope out recently to show the kids, picture 2. 

My enthusiasm was well and truly reignited. I fittingly used some inheritance from my mum and dad to upgrade to picture 3 my Skywatcher 150p on eq3-2, which I love. This will see me through, I have no real intentions of upgrading, at the moment lol!  

[Stu]

My first scope was a Celestron C150HD on an EQ3-2 mount. A 150mm Newt, 1000mm focal length which was nice. Only problem was that it was a short tube i.e. Bird-Jones type with the corrector lens in the focus tube. It gave pretty good images, and allowed me to see the Ring Nebula and M13 amongst other. It was reasonable on planets, particularly as Saturn and Jupiter were high in the sky together when I first started about 16 years ago now. I saw shadow transits and even the Enke division on Saturns rings, but above x150 it started to go soft.

I had a very nice caseful of Japanese Celestron Ultima Plossls and a Barlow, all of which I sold for a snip and still regret it!

My reason for upgrading was wanting better views of planets and DSOs. I bought an Orion Optics OMC200 on a Vixen Sphnix mount. Lovely scope but it took me a long time to get the best out of it in terms of cooling, collimation and dew prevention. I knew very little when I bought it so made plenty of mistakes, but when working well it gave fantastic views. I would love one of the new versions which have cooling vents in as I'm sure that makes a big difference in terms of getting to thermal equilibrium.

I knew nothing about Apo refractors at that stage, and have since developed a bit of a taste for them .

[Peter Drew]

If you are lucky(?) enough to have a 5" triplet APO, 81/2" achro, 16" SCT, 20" and 30" Dobs and a 6" Ha solar telescope, what do you upgrade to?.  

[Stu]

2 minutes ago, Peter Drew said:

If you are lucky(?) enough to have a 5" triplet APO, 81/2" achro, 16" SCT, 20" and 30" Dobs and a 6" Ha solar telescope, what do you upgrade to?.  

Ahh, but what was your first scope Peter??  

[rockystar]

my first scope was a 76mm reflector "bargain" offer from Groupon (advertised at £200 with 80% off) from my wife about 3 Christmases ago. It really wasn't £200 worth of scope: it had an awful alt-az mount, crappy plastic eyepieces and barlow,  and I could never get the finder scope aligned.

fortunately, it didn't put me off, just made me want something bigger and better, so when I got some money i got a Skywatcher 200 EQ5 and then i "upgraded" that to a Skyliner 200 dob. Happy with this for (for now )

[Peter Drew]

See the other similar thread Stu, talk about humble beginnings! 

[Obsession 30]

My 1st scope was a present when I was a kid, it was something like a 2" refractor, nothing special but I didn't get back into the hobby till a lot later when I purchased my 1st proper telescope which was a lx200 8" but aperture fever soon struck and I upgraded it very quickly to a 12" version, aperture fever seemed to come and go over the next few years but I managed to keep it under some sort of control , having spoken to Dave at Obsession Telescopes a few times over that period and missing the 1st batch of 30's and being told he was not going to make any more, which put a bit of a damper on things, so that put me back to contemplating what to go for, after many more months had passed I finally decide on the Obsession 25" and rang Dave to place the order, while chatting to him I asked if he would ever make any 30" again, which he replied to by saying they are making a batch this year, so I placed a order there and then for a 30" 

I have also added a few other telescope over the years to my collection but nothing quite as big as the 30 

Picture of my little baby