Scope Decisions

[pook]

Hello All! First post here. I was wondering if anyone can advise me. I recently bought a old Celestron Nexstar 114 from a colleague at work. It was a complete impulse buy for my wife, who had a telescope on her wishlist. To cut a long story short, the mount has broken and won't work in the azimuth plane. I opened it up and noticed a hole blown in one of the ICs on the mainboard. So... we've decided to get a new scope. Hence the questions.

Q1. Was the Celestron 114 a parabolic scope or spherical?

Q2. Should I get a spherical scope again?

I'm looking at three possible candidates:

Celestron Astromaster 130 EQ-MD

Skywatcher Explorer 130M

Konus Konusmotor 130

They're all spherical, I know. However, one thing we've both decided upon, is that it must have a motorised EQ mount, as we want to have a go at imaging. I'm aware that all these mounts will be pretty rubbish, and hard to align, but it's just a starter scope to cut our teeth on. The cheapest parabolic scope with a driven EQ mount is MUCH more expensive. The Konus and Celestron are fairly fast OTAs and the Skywatcher is a slower f7 OTA. Would the f7 scope suffer less from spherical aberrations? If so, would it be much less, or all these scopes much of a muchness? Both my wife and I tend to behave the same way with things like this: We will either get bored pretty quickly and never use it again, or we'll enjoy it and quickly want to get something much better like a decent 10 or 12" scope on a decent mount, so I don't want to spend a great deal of money only to either A) get bored and stick it in the attic, or lose too much money when we upgrade. Given all of the above, which of the three scopes is best? Thanks for reading my long first post

[russ]

You are better off saving a little more for the Skywatcher 130PM and get the parabolic mirror. The 130M will be Spherical and at f6.9 is little too fast for a spherical mirror to work well (bring the light to a sharp focus).

[pook]

Aha! I didn't know there was the PM version. I thought it was just the non driven P version, and the spherical M version.

That makes my choiuce pretty clear I think. Unless there's an alternative parabolic motor driven newtonian with a EQ mount... that kind of draws a line under it I think.

Any other comments or advice.. or choices?

[pook]

Just a thought... will I have problems attaching a dSLR to this scope? Is there enough back focus? I notice the more expensive Skywatcher scopes (the black ones) have "direct DLR connection" listed as a feature, and the 130PM does not. Does this mean I'm in for a whole heap of trouble trying to image with this scope?

[edit]

Now considering the 150P or 150PL... and getting a motor for the EQ3-2 later. My problem is now that I want to do planetary viewing as well as DSO imaging. Would the PL version (f8 I believe) be a good scope for both, or should I get the faster f5 P version?

[rowan46]

there isn't one scope that does everything well, which is why so many people here have more than one scope, for planets you need a slower scope because it takes magnification better, for dso's it needs to be faster to cut down on exposure time and give a wider view. if you want to image dso's you need a good mount and that means money. if you try it on a mount that can't hack it you are in for a world of frustration. yes it can give you practice on the method but the results will be disheartening. so if you are going down the imaging dso route get the right mount and save yourself some frustration. this book explains it all its a must read if you are going to do astrophotography of dso's Books - Making Every Photon Count - Steve Richards