Advice for a friend

[johnrt]

My mate has been inspired by my telescope purchase and is looking at getting a scope of his own.

He's not in to doing any imaging and wants something that's pretty easy to set-up and be using pretty quickly. He likes camping and holidays in the South of France and would be wanting to take the scope with him (he does own a van).

Based on this I recommended he get a Dob of some description, after having a look around FLO's offerings, he agreed.

So his potential choices are:

Skyliner 200p - £265

Skyliner 250px - £395

Meade 8" Lightbridge - £387

What we would like to know is the Meade a big step up in quality from a skywatcher, as essentially the meade matches the 200p in aperture but for the same cost as a 250px.

Would any step up in quality be vastly outweighed by the increase of aperture on the 250px.

Which would you choose, and why?

Many thanks

John

[John]

The Meade Lightbridge's are about the same quality as the Skywatcher equivilents optically and mechanically (I've owned both types). The Lightbridge 8" won't perform any better than the Skywatcher 8" and the truss tube design of the Lightbridge does not bring any real benefits in sizes less than 12" in my opinion.

So for me it would be either of the 2 Skywatcher's, as budget dictates. Remember to leave some £'s over for some additional accessories that your friend will want in due course.

[johnrt]

Thanks, that's just the sort of info we were after. I'm trying to convince him to go for the 250 over the 200, in the long run I think he will appreciate it.

I think that there are 2 EP's with the skywatcher and only 1 with the Meade. He's mainly interested in planets and some nebula so will be looking for some higher power EP's and maybe a barlow.

[pvaz]

The extra aperture will definitely help with nebula and other faint fuzzies such as galaxies.

However the 250p is a bit more demanding on EP quality and is heavier for transport.

On accessories I would recommend a telrad finder, an eyepatch, ND filter for the Moon, a red light torch and pocket sky atlas. The money he can save if he goes with the 200p (vs the 250p) will be enough for all this accessories.

[Doc]

Aperture rules and you will see more with the extra 2". But then it is a bigger scope which means more room to store and heavier to lift.