Back with my Meade 4504

[Gra]

Hello all, a newbie here saying hello . I’m Graham from Merseyside and have been interested in the night sky since I was a child.

Now 10 years ago I took that big step and got a mortgage and got married. Hey, I’ve got my own house and loads of free time and look at this Costco has a Meade 4504 114mm Equatorial Reflecting Telescope for sale, wow, I want one. That was around 2001. Well some of you may have been here, new house, married and yes, kids on the way. Well no time for me to start my new hobby and to be honest I thought it was a bit of a pig to set up and use at the time, so I take it apart and put it away in the loft. 10 years later I now have 2 beautiful girls and a lot more free time, great!

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been going through the manual and finally worked out how to polar align the mount. After setting up the Starfinder hand controller I was ready to look. So Jupiter, moon and M42 got the first looks.

Well was I impressed? Yes by the sights but I am unsure of the quality of the Meade 4504. When I look through my binoculars 10 x 50 the sky seems much clearer than through the scope. The mirrors look clean but the question is, are the eyepieces supplied with the scope up to it. The 3 EP supplied are Modified Achromatic H 25mm, 12.5mm and SR 4mm, all 0.965’’ O.D . Has any one had any experience of these EP’s? Would I be better getting a new EP? (bye the way the 4mm is useless).

If I were to upgrade and buy a new scope, what would your recommendations be as I may have £1000 to play with in the next few weeks. I would like to look and take photos so a bit of an all rounder would be good and I also would like it to be portable so I can bring it out of the shed and set-up within 15-20min.

Thanks

Gra.