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


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I started with a Tasco 60mm frac back when I was in my late teens. Although I maintained my interest, financially life got in the way of a significant upgrade until 2006 when I traded up to a Revelation 10" dob and I still have it now. It's a great scope and I have seen many things with it but I have often wandered if I could have gone for a slightly more portable 8" and not noticed the difference. And then sometimes I wander why I did not go for a 12 or 16" instead!

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Incredible enormous dobsonians I saw in this thread :) 

Started with a Celestron 114/900 (1998) then Celestron G8 (2000) and logically bought a very tiny William Optics recently, Zenithstar 71 ED / F 418mm, because widefield is the new cool

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First scope was a Sears 40mm *REFLECTOR* - it was a long tube, with a tiny mirror at the bottom, and a plastic (!) secondary that was square. It had spindly little wooden legs - man was that thing wobbly! I did look at the Moon and Jupiter with it, but not much else. This is when I was just 8 years old. Many, many years later, I got to borrow a friend's Meade 4.5in EQ Newt, and it was awesome! So I bought one myself. That only lasted two years, and then I moved up to a C8. I've had various scopes since then, but I have wound up back at an 8" SCT (this time, a Meade 2080) - I just love the 8" SCT format. Perfect for me! :)

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Has for me, my first telescope was a 130mm Newtonian on EQ3, then I decided to get better optic with more aperture, so a 200mm Newtonian on EQ5. To be able to see more faint stars, more nebulae and star clusters. (:  8 inches will last many years, I am surprised each time I use that instrument.

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I had been using a Meade Polaris 60/700mm refractor on and off for about eleven years. I chose that for my five year service award at my last employers as carriage clocks are definitely not my style! Just celebrated my tenth anniversary at my current employers by buying myself a Skywatcher 200p Dobsonion. A definite improvement :icon_biggrin:

20161022_111132.jpg

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I started with a 200 P dob for about a year...then went to a ed 100 pro with az4 mount.. which i had for around 2 years...a mate came round this summer with his new tak 100...an evening with that and some nice quality eps was awsome...sold the ed100 and am now the proud owner of a tak 100..

tmp_12365-20161006_172242-515214164.jpg

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My first scope as a 2" reflector around 1976.

I saw Mars or Jupiter but it fled from the FOV as I looked at it!

I must be one of the few people Patrick Moore put off astronomy, because he said it wasn't worth using a scope less than 3" or 4" for a reflector, so I gave up :-(

I got back into things when I realised my bridge camera could take simple astrophotos, and my next scope was a Bresser 76/700 from Lidl nearly 40 years later.

 

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16 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

My first scope as a 2" reflector around 1976.

I saw Mars or Jupiter but it fled from the FOV as I looked at it!

I must be one of the few people Patrick Moore put off astronomy, because he said it wasn't worth using a scope less than 3" or 4" for a reflector, so I gave up :-(

I got back into things when I realised my bridge camera could take simple astrophotos, and my next scope was a Bresser 76/700 from Lidl nearly 40 years later.

 

That's really sad! As much as I admired Patrick for his enthusiasm and easy going style, he did at times talk rubbish. His books greatly inspired me in the early days but his insistence that the minimum useful apertures of 3" for a refractor and 6" for a reflector were just plain wrong. As a young budding amateur in those early days, i too was influenced by Patrick's telescope advice and sold my beautiful 2.25" (60mm) Astral refractor because it wasn't 3". What an idiot! It was a great little scope that would have benefited greatly from a couple of better quality eyepieces. I wish I still had it! Since then I've had it proven to me time and again that aperture is NOT king as many claim, but rather quality is! I've seen countless large aperture reflectors simply die alongside a much smaller high quality refractor, and then just when I thought I'd got telescopes sussed, i saw a revered 4" Vixen fluorite have the rug pulled from under it by a 4.5" F11 Newtonian. :icon_scratch:

Mike

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My first was also a Tasco - a 90mm one which I adored. The mount was woeful, the eyepieces garbage and the diagonal junk, but the lens was always shiny as I'd take it a apart and polish it with Pledge to keep it clean. I decided to upgrade when someone broke into my house, while a student and steal everything (including the hot water cylinder) except my Ipswich Town flag, on which they wrote a very unsavoury message to the police, completely missing out the letter K in the process. I upgraded it to a Celestron 6" Newtonian which had some funny corrector lens in and was impossible to collimate. 

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I started out almost two years ago. First was an eq5 orion 8". 

This was good except it was a pain to transport and eyepiece position was annoying 

I bought a solar filter on it and realized that I wanted to do more solar as well. 

I bought a st80 that was flocked. It was interesting. 

Sold both, bought a really nice 100ed equinox. 

It was awesome on double stars and Jupiter. 

I upgraded my mount to an azeq6. Did some imaging. 

Sold the frac to fund my 10" Meade acf 

 

Bought a dedicated solar scope which I sold and upgraded to another lunt just now. 

 

Hopefully now I'm set for a two Scope imaging and visual set up for at least four years until I'm done school :p

 

 

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Interesting question and one that will be popular for obvious reasons, For me kind a of a two pronged question really, as I started as a boy with a 60mm tasco had numerous scopes some for not very long either, and didn't really use much. A  4.1/2 reflector, then a darkstar 6.1/4 then the same but 8.3/4

A konus 90mm refractor, and Bresser 6" refractor, a 16" Meade dob. A couple of meade 8" SCTs. over the years.

 Then a love affair with a Meade F15 7" Mak. sold and got another F15 Meade Mak at some point. Through all this, the one change I would consider the biggest upgrade is when I went from the 7" Meade Mak to the 245 MM Orion Optics 1/10th pv Newt F6.3

Briefly a C11. That was the pits, old rubbish. But going from the Mak To the Orion that I was starting to do lunar and planetary imaging with. Less subjective than visual alone. That the jump in quality over the Meade Mak was easily obvious.

The Mak was good. But the Orion really on the finer points left it for dead.

I sold the Orion. Then a year later purchased it back for the same price I sold it for. Now that's love.

Then a 12" Orion optics F6 1/12th Pv SPX which I sold as I didn't get on with, and wasn't as good to be honest as it should have been I didn't think.

The last scope I got was a sky watcher 300p second hand very very cheap. The two scopes I currently image with are the 300p and 245mm Orion Newt. That had to be re coated. And never quite seemed as good. Though I still use it, and is still a great scope. Its just before the scope seemed to be almost magical in performance. Actually I want to find that type of scope again. But can no longer afford to shift through numerous optics finding a world beater. Its a art, and not all scopes are created equal. which is a unpopular view especially from those building and selling them. Did I mention the spotting scopes. All really just good enough for nature really.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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My first scope was a Skywatcher 127mm Maksutov on EQ3-2. Bought because of it's compact size, image quality and no need for collimation.

I upgraded to a C8 after half a year, because I love deep sky objects and have understood that apperture is king when it comes to deep sky. You just see more. I also bought a second scope that was compact and would fit into a pretty full car. And that would still fit unto current mount.

I also upgraded to steel tripod and better finders.

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Started with a Tasco 2.5" refractor circa 1980, upgraded to a Tasco 4.5" reflector circa 1982. Both came from my mothers Club-book. Spin forward to 2009, having been busy having a family I dusted off the Tasco. My how things had changed! I quickly realised there were plenty of a upgrades available to the Tasco, I went for a Seben 6" reflector which I was fairly disappointed with.

After searching the net/discovering SGL I ventured back into the market and bought what I consider to be my 1st proper telescope. This was a Helios 6" reflector, an absolutely rocked solid scope! Since then I have slowly increased in aperture and now have a C9.25 SCT, 200mm newt and an ED80. I did briefly own a OO10" newt as well, but found it a bit large at the time. There has also been the following C8n, Mak 180 and a ETX125.

The main reason for upgrading has been purely larger aperture and longer focal length for planetary imaging.

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On 10/30/2016 at 13:39, bunnygod1 said:

Started with a Tasco 2.5" refractor circa 1980, upgraded to a Tasco 4.5" reflector circa 1982. Both came from my mothers Club-book. Spin forward to 2009, having been busy having a family I dusted off the Tasco. My how things had changed! I quickly realised there were plenty of a upgrades available to the Tasco, I went for a Seben 6" reflector which I was fairly disappointed with.

After searching the net/discovering SGL I ventured back into the market and bought what I consider to be my 1st proper telescope. This was a Helios 6" reflector, an absolutely rocked solid scope! Since then I have slowly increased in aperture and now have a C9.25 SCT, 200mm newt and an ED80. I did briefly own a OO10" newt as well, but found it a bit large at the time. There has also been the following C8n, Mak 180 and a ETX125.

The main reason for upgrading has been purely larger aperture and longer focal length for planetary imaging.

You sold the C8, 180 mak and ETX 125?

Why did you sell the 180 mak? To fund the 9.25?

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13 hours ago, Tyson M said:

You sold the C8, 180 mak and ETX 125?

Why did you sell the 180 mak? To fund the 9.25?

The C8 went replaced by the OO10". 

The ETX125 I was just disappointed with.

THE MAK180 was an excellent planetary scope, but the lure of the C9.25 was just too much :icon_biggrin: I got very lucky as well price wise. sold the MAK and bought the C9.25 within days of each other. With less than a couple of hundred pound difference in price. Even more of a coincidence was the C9.25 came from Milton Keynes and the MAK went to Milton Keynes, which is just down the road from me!

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I will definitely pick up either a mak Cass or mak newt for planetary some day

 

I am not surprised you chose the 9.25, since you're into planetary imaging 

 

I was seconds away from pulling the trigger on a new 180 mak but a deal came up on my Meade that I couldn't pass up. hopefully my planetary views Will be awesome. I looked through a c11 edge at Jupiter last year an It had extraordinary color and vivid red spot

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On 26/10/2016 at 12:39, mikeDnight said:

That's really sad! As much as I admired Patrick for his enthusiasm and easy going style, he did at times talk rubbish. His books greatly inspired me in the early days but his insistence that the minimum useful apertures of 3" for a refractor and 6" for a reflector were just plain wrong. As a young budding amateur in those early days, i too was influenced by Patrick's telescope advice and sold my beautiful 2.25" (60mm) Astral refractor because it wasn't 3". What an idiot! It was a great little scope that would have benefited greatly from a couple of better quality eyepieces. I wish I still had it! Since then I've had it proven to me time and again that aperture is NOT king as many claim, but rather quality is! I've seen countless large aperture reflectors simply die alongside a much smaller high quality refractor, and then just when I thought I'd got telescopes sussed, i saw a revered 4" Vixen fluorite have the rug pulled from under it by a 4.5" F11 Newtonian. :icon_scratch:

Mike

That is exactly what happened to me. I bought a shiny new Tasco 60mm telescope from Dixons in the late 70's and started enjoying viewing the planets and the moon and was perfectly happy with it, on the balcony of my flat. I then got a book out of the local library by Patrick and after his thorough rubbishing of refractors less than three inches, I became quite despondent and thought I had wasted my money. I spent a small fortune then on a 6 inch mirror and a secondary and built a reflector with the instructions from a small paperback book by Reg Spry I believe.  It was a monster with a half shaft from a car and a load of timber and the eyepieces, focuser and finder from my lovely refractor. I didnt have anywhere near the enjoyment with it, that I had with my refractor and I could no longer look at the fantastic views of the Pennines during the day from my lofty balcony. I understand that for serious observing you need an expensive setup, but we cant all afford it at the age of 21 can we?

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