I wasn’t trying to be dismissive of your comments, sorry if it sounded that way. Just for the price difference, I could add the autoguider setup and the newt for the same price as just the reflector. The money runs out somewhere, I just have to figure out what I can live without for a year to able to get something workable to start with. I guess the phrase “you get what you pay for” applies?
So refractors are pretty much fixed lenses so not really subject to movement? I was looking at a 2nd hand Explore Scientific ED80 Triplet in the classified’s here but had seen some threads saying you need specialist tools to collimate it, but I guess you’re saying the chances of it needing collimating are small compared to a newt.
I guess I could pratice collimating on my current Dobsonian, as it’s basically the same as a Newtonian, and if I mess up, I haven’t lost much since I’m not using it anyway....
So, on a tangent, what’s worse for collimation, a newtonian or a ritchie-chretien? I’ve seen lots of moans about the RC’s, but also seen several people say they can do it easily once you know how with either a laser or takahashi (or cheshire at a pinch) Mind you, plenty of others say that none of the methods actually agree with each other either, so I’m not sure what the actual working method is.
Russell.