Is smallerbetter...or should I grow muscles?

[the lemming]

Hello again

I'm still on my quest for a first telescope.

I was musing between a Skywatcher 200P on a Dobson or EQ mount but that was till I found out how heavy these things were. Never knew that the EQ combo was half my weight

So I've decided to reassess what I wanted in the first place which was an easily portable telescope and I've reluctantly decided to discount an EQ mount and place my flag in the Dobson camp.

This brings me to the 150 and 200 dobsons made by Skywatcher. I would appreciate any comments both positive and negative for both these products.

Or should I take up weight-lifting to help me transport these telescopes?

I was nievely thinking that I could carry one of these on my back up a Lake District top.

[jgs001]

Whilst generally, bigger is considered to be better, it's no good, if you don't use it... The best scope for you is the one you use the most. If you're concerned about the weight and how heavy all the kit gets, then you're not wrong to consider downsizing. Unless of course, your wanting to build up some muscle in the first place

As for carting a scope up to the top of something in the lake district on your back, personally, I'd be thinking along the lines of a smaller refractor, the ST102 possibly... The reason being, it'll take the trip better, won't need collimating etc. etc. Is not going to be as heavy or as bulky as the Dob...

Or even better... if you can get both.. Dob for at home, frac for the lake district..

[Parus major]

Just to enlighten you, the 150PL f8 tube that Skywatcher sell that's ultimately the Skyliner 150 tube weighs 5.8Kg, minus tube rings so you've got that plus the base. I've taken my setup in the sig on the bus and it wasn't too bad but it wasn't fun until I got there.

[Capricorn]

If you are seriously considering the carrying round as described then collimation will suffer. To the extent that you could get expert at recollimating everytime.

The 150 isn't feather weight, not a great struggle either, but it is still a 6 inch plus tube to carry, weight could be OK but the physical size may a problem, and there is still the dob base which I think is 2 pieces.

Will say that no scope is exactly light, have a WO Meg90 and in it's case you know you are carrying it round.

[Chris H]

Meade do a little scope for backpacking Meade ETX80 Goto Telescope - Special Backpack Edition but at 80mm diameter it's pretty small and I probably wouldnt bother with it unless you plan to do all your observing from the top of a mountain. where else do you plan to use your scope? This will help for giving advise.

[brianb]

I was nievely thinking that I could carry one of these on my back up a Lake District top.

Hmmm. I have and use a CPC1100 (around 50 Kg complete) ... but if I had to lug something up a Lakeland fell, it would be a decent pair of 10x50 binoculars and a camera tripod to mount them on. Plus warm wind & waterproof clothing ... it gets cold & draughty on mountain tops and, in Cumbria, it's often wet too.

[Astro_Baby]

Whoooeeee - I climbed the white mountain in Crete a few years ago. It not exactly like a mountain more like a very steep fell walk and if I had tried doing it with anything more than a backpack with water and essentials in I think I would have died.

Last year we climed up Karfi in Crete - again its not a mountain as such just a very steep hill thats a very long walk in a hot sun and we lugged some binos and a camera up there along with the water supplies and that was the very limit.

If your really serious about hiking the distance with a scope bear in mind even small scopes can quickly weigh a lot when your lugging them about.

The scope that comes to mind, though I dont know if they make it anymore and how it would perform against other stuff (it was highly rated once) is the Edmund Scientific Exolorer(?) It was a weird little Newtonian made from plastic and designed with back packers in mind.

I'll try and find a link for you.

[Astro_Baby]

Ah ha - here it is Astroscan Plus Telescope - best selling beginner telescope | Edmund Scientific

I remember when they came out they got a lot of good reviews but that was ages ago so no idea how it compares these days.

I considered getting one back around the late 80s for a holiday we were taking but I never got round to it.

[Parus major]

Hmmm. I have and use a CPC1100 (around 50 Kg complete) ... but if I had to lug something up a Lakeland fell, it would be a decent pair of 10x50 binoculars and a camera tripod to mount them on. Plus warm wind & waterproof clothing ... it gets cold & draughty on mountain tops and, in Cumbria, it's often wet too.

Hi Brian!

Might be worth thinking about a birdwatching spotterscope, they are built for this purpose. I'm thinking about the Opticron IS50 or IS60, a package with a 20x eyepiece you can get for under a ton and they work well on a walking pole monopod with a camera screw.

[GazK]

Celestron 15x70 binoculars and a tripod gets my vote...

[LukeSkywatcher]

Obviously you want the weight down to a bare minimum. This will not be done with a Dob or an EQ mount.

A small refrac (80-100mm) on a simple Alt-Az mount would be good.

Also a nice set of bins (15x70,20X90 etc) and a sturdy tripod would weigh in nicely. The Celestron 15x70 are an absolute steal at £75 (i think FLO sell them at this price) .

[the lemming]

If your really serious about hiking the distance with a scope bear in mind even small scopes can quickly weigh a lot when your lugging them about.

Don't worry, I have absolutely no intention of lugging anything that weighs 35kg any farther than from the boot of my car to 3 inches from the tailgate.

It takes me all my time to carry my kit, a dSLR and my furry little **** up a hill let alone thinking about taking a huge tube which has an uneven weight distribution as well.

I'm guessing plonking my new toy on top of Helvellyn may be a pipe-dream too far.

Helvellyn top | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

[jgs001]

Bet you'd get superb viewing from there... but without an airlift...

[haitch]

Are you just thinking of carting it up there for an evening's viewing or a camping trip? If the latter you might want to consider un ultra compact dob. It would probably be too much of a faff to set up and collimate for an evening but a weekend would probably be worth it

See here... Sumerian Optics

The guy is a member here too

[BenM]

I empathsize with you because I also want to walk with my outfit. There are really several different scopes that you will want and none of them can practically take the place of the other.

A large scope has aperature for which there is no practical substitute. While some designs and craftsmanship certainly do more per mm of aperature than others, there are very practical limits to a given aperature. However, large scopes, particlarly very large ones (over 10" for the amateur) are hardly portable without a truck or trailer and require extensive setup and take-down. They really are best suited to semi-permanent installations or very short movements in and out of a house or shed. For 10" and under instruments down to about 6", it becomes more or less practical to transport it by vehicle but they are hardly backpackable.

Smaller scopes, under 6" and typically 50mm to 130mm can be quite practical for travel and easy setup. They can be a short-focal length refractor or a long-focal length catadioptric type like the cassegrain scopes. Unless your observing is primarily done at a fixed or semi-permanent location, you will likely want both.

A short focal length refractor is typically longer and heavier than a cassegrain scope of the same objective but it provides wider fields of view and a wide range of optical quality including the best you will find anywhere. For the better quality optics, you will pay significantly more per mm of aperature compared to a cassegrain scope.

A long focal length cassegrain scope is typically more compact and lighter than a refractor of similar aperature. It's long focal length means that it cannot give wide-angle views including several degrees field of view. However, it excels at high-power viewing of the moon, planets, other solar system objects, globular clusters and binary systems. It can also do this without demanding the eyepiece perform any amazing optical feats. Catadioptrics are typically very easy on eyepieces, allowing you to use simple and small designs. Attempting to obtain wide field views at higher powers from a short focal length refractor might require an eyepiece nearly as large as another small telescope! (Imagine an Ethos atop a Powermate for example)

Some of the larger nebula, open clusters, and large galaxies and other deep sky objects may not fit in the field of view of a cassegrain scope but consider that some of those objects are also too faint for the small refractor so that neither portable scope is really as ideal as a large reflector for those objects.

Therefore, consider for a portable scope both a 80mm or so doublet or triplet refractor and a 90 to 102mm Maksutov Cassegrain catadioptric scope or even a 127mm Schmidt Cassegrain. The SCT's corrector lens is lighter than the Maksutov's so it maintains a low weight even out to 5 inches where the Maksutov gets quite heavy (around 6 pounds for the OTA compared to 9). The Maksutov has a smaller central obstruction however and is particularly superior at the smaller objective diameters. At larger objective diameters, the slight difference in CO size becomes less significant and SCT's are far more popular in these larger diameters.

The characteristic narrow field of view through a cassegrain scope makes them more difficult to track objects with and they are probably best paired with an equitorial mount or a AZ mount with computer/motorized tracking, particularly if you want to maintain an object in the center of the field for an extended period of time without any effort. Nevertheless, some people, myself included, choose a cassegrain type scope on a manual AZ mount for its simplicity and portability. I do recommend having a geared fine-adjustment type AZ mount like the Vixen Portamount II, Takahashi Teegul Sky-Patrol II (TG-SP2), any of the various Stellervue geared AZ mounts, or even a Manfrotto 401 junior geared head. There are a number of others as well. With some of these, you may need to turn two knobs to track the object in its arc but they are certainly simpler and lighter than a GEM.

With the refractor, AZ mounting is much easier owing to the generous wide fields (and low power) typical of these scopes. There's a recent thread on grab-n-go refractors and suitable mounts in which various mounts like the aforementioned Vixen are discussed as well as nice offerings from Tele Vue and the exquisite Super Halfhitch mount.

Best wishes

[the lemming]

Hello BenM and everybody who has kindly commented

Thanks for all your helpful advice, especially the points that telescopes are not exactly light compared to the cheap versions I have handled in the past.

I would have replied sooner but I've just come off some night shifts and needed the sleep. :-)

Cheers

[derekm]

Don't buy a little scope; you won't see anything (hardly) through it.

If I'd started with my ETX 80, I would have given up the hobby years ago. It's fine for wide vistas of the milky way or observing the moon, but little else. I can barely recognise the Orion nebula, even at 125 x mag..

IMO 6" dia minimum, preferably 8", but not for climbing a mountain with!

[andyrpsmith]

I bought a CPC 925 as my first scope and did I get a surprise when it was delivered. Thank god it splits in two and even then it's a struggle out the front door and around the back. I do not regret buying as it was at a bargain price - the same as the CPC 800. Only had the chance to use it once due to weather but was very impressed with Jupiter.