My Gear

My first proper telescope "Alfred" a Saxon 10 inch Dobsonian telescope that I bought a few good eyepieces for. It's a fantastic telescope that's easy to use and solid. At 15kgs plus the base you are looking at about 24kgs in total. It may be weighty, but it makes up for it in observing power.

That telescope gave me the bug, with it I have seen/captured some amazing sights that I will hold in my heart. I have seen Saturn's rings and the Cassini Division along with her moons. I have seen Jupiter and it's four brightest moons, I even got a photograph of Ganymede as it passed Jupiter, you can see the shadow on Jupiter from Ganymede. I saw and imaged my first Comet and caught Saturn as the moon passed in front of it.

I cannot recommend this telescope enough for observations, user friendly it gives you the solar system and some of the brightest deep sky objects - Star Cluster and the brighter nebula to start you off with your first steps into Astronomy.

The Sky-Watcher ed80 with dual speed focuser and dew shield. It is a completely different beast to "Alfred", With an f/7.5 compared to the f/4 of "Alfred" the ed80 needs a lot more time on the target to gather light. With "Alfred" I could take 1.5s exposures at the most before getting "Star trailing" in my images, with my ed80 I get truly little shooting at that exposure time.

The ed80 is elegant and powerful, the mount you see in the picture is not. It was an old rickety EQ that came with another $20 telescope I got .... what? it was cheap!! and it fit the purpose for the ed80 so I could take images of the Moon. Now I have a vastly different set up!

This mount will most likely - unless I get my observatory in which I will switch to a pier setup - be the last mount I ever need to buy. with a load capacity of 20kgs there is likely no telescope I can afford, that will not be able to sit on this beast. With a variety of slewing rates and a huge data base along with a user-friendly UI it is a powerhouse that comes at a reasonable price tag.

Once set up it feels immovable, it has a level on it and comes with extension bar for balancing plus an extra counterweight, just in case.

I love it!

What can I say, this low cost Newtonian telescope is something else. An aperture of 200mm and focal length of 1000mm it is light and sturdy. The 2" focuser is dual speed and made with enough draw back for prime focusing with a DSLR or using a dedicated Astro camera.

It has replaced my 10" dobsonian telescope as I really wanted something portable that I could mount on my NEQ6Pro. This is a perfect "little" Newtonian, it's F5 mirror means I can gather more light faster for imaging and collimation is a breeze. The only thing I have changed is the secondary mirror collimation screws, which I replaced with thumb screws for easy adjusting which is also safer as you don't need to run the risk of dropping an Allen Key on the primary mirror.

The viewing is great and although I lost 50mm on the aperture I am happy with what this telescope can offer. Value for money is on point at $800 and it comes with the tube rings plus the finder scope and a nice 2" eye piece for easy viewing.