Getting the upgrade itch... advice on EQ setups

[2Karl]

Hi all,

It's been a long time since I posted anything on here, had a lot of stuff going on in my life but that seems to have calmed down now... and I find myself with a bit of extra cash, which leads me on to...

I've been observing the skies for a few years now with my trusty Celestron NexStar 130 SLT. I've been mostly using the Meade zoom eyepiece and Revelation Astro 2.5x barlow to observe planets, double stars (I have a love affair with albireo) and deep sky objects (I'm fortunate to live in a relatively dark area - when there's no clouds the milky way is clearly visible), and I recently purchased a superb OVL PAnaview 32mm 2" eyepiece which gives me the most satisfying view of the double cluster... but I've been thinking of stepping it up a notch.

First of all, I am interested in trying out astrophotography as a side project (I know, I know, I'll end up getting sucked in), but more than that I want a bigger aperture so that I have a better chance of resolving some of the details of the DSOs I'm observing. After spending probably way too long looking around I've found a few potential candidates, but wanted to get some advice first.

The SkyWatcher Explorer 300PDS NEQ6 PRO is a pretty tasty looking morsel (300mm, EQ goto mount) at £1650 or thereabouts, the 250mm variant is about 300 quid cheaper, but I also noticed that there is, for an extra £400, a Maksutov-Newtonian variant, the SkyWatcher DS-PRO 190MN. It has less aperture than either of the other two - can anyone explain what the relative advantages of this scope would be over a standard newtonian? Also, Is there a big step up in what I will see from 200-300 considering I'll be upgrading from 130mm (in short, should I cool my aperture fever)?

I did also look at huge aperture (500mm) dobsonians - they didn't have goto on them which isn't too much of an issue (when I use the goto function of my NexStar I always pay attention to where the objects are located so that I can learn the sky and locate them without computer assist), but I figure it's not going to be much use for astrophotography and not very portable.

I also considered a mix-and-match approach, buying separate OTA and mount, but I'm not sure whether it works out more affordable to do it this way.

To sum up, this is what I'm looking for:

• A large aperture (>200mm)
• 2" focuser which doesn't have the horrible slop that the NexStar 130SLT does
• Fine focus adjustment on the focuser
• Equatorial mount with tracking (possibly goto)
• Preferably a "future proof" mount which I could easily stick a variety of scopes on without issue

What I'll be doing with it:

• Observing DSOs, stars, double stars, clusters
• Observing moon and planets (I have still never seen Neptune or Uranus)
• Possibly astrophotography in the future

Help, advice, recommendations welcome. My budget is around £2000 max (but I'd prefer to spend half that amount if I can get away with it