I found this site a few weeks ago and I really like the style & tone - nicely antipodean rather than US\Euro. I probably would have stayed a reader rather than join but I lashed out and bought a scope and wanted to tell someone!
I was at ****Smith Electronics with my wife looking for an MP3 player and saw a stack of Celestron Nextstar 80 GT - go to , 80 mm alt/az - for $499. Went home and checked the web site and saw it listed for $399. My wife said 'You have been wanting a telescope for a while - why dont you buy one?' Some wives are very good!
Anyway, I have been going through the long running process of wanting to buy a scope but not having the $$$s to buy anything I desired and wont until the teenagers leave the house. But for less than $400 for a scope that is portable and go to and will let me learn my way round the sky seemed pretty good. I was not expecting good optics.
I bought the scope, assembled it in 10 minutes. Took 20 mins to align (mostly looking up star names to do 2 star align) and then spent 1-2 hours with son looking at Orion - seemed good -, Mars - could see it was round orange and had some marks? and Saturn where we could make out it had rings and moon but no other detail. Then clouds.
Images were not as good as I remember from a Unitron 3 inch in the 70s but that is a long time ago and my eyes worked better. GO TO worked a treat and tracking kept Orion centred for 10-15 minutes.
Overall happy with the buy and day dreaming of something nice on a Losmandy G8.
Dave from Perth.
& 
to IIS. T'scope sounds O.K. for the price. Hope you & yours have a safe & ![[1ponders]'s Avatar](../vbiis/customavatars/avatar45_9.gif){kind=avatar}
