Hi I've had my good old Carton telescope about 30 years .It's been my grab n go scope . since then I have added an 8" GOTO Dob ,Celestron Nexstar SE6 and a 102mm Mak on a SkywatcherAZ GTi mini mount to my collection.The smaller scopes are for travelling out bush. Would getting an ED80 be much of an advantage over the Carton scope, the F.O.V should be about the same,but the overall image brightness and possible reduced amount of C.A. might be a deciding factor. I have not had the opportunity to look through an ED80 . Astro photography is a possibility in the future.
Your photos bring back fond memories of the Carton 60mm scope that I owned for many years.
I eventually brought an ED80mm (F7.5) scope and it was a major improvement. The 80mm scope simply has more light grasp, greater resolution and no CA. From memory, the carton was only usable to about 60x and showed annoying CA at that magnification.
The 80mm may be larger, but is still easily mounted on a variety of mounts. I would suggest buying a Skywatcher AZ4 for it.
