Thanks, all, for your responses. I really appreciate you taking the time to offer some advice
Sorry, haven't figured out how to quote from the quick reply window
, so hopefully you see this:
Mental - thanks for the warm welcome
that sounds like an interesting technique. If I still had my Dobsonian, I would definitely have tried that, but unfortunately I sold it not too long after I first bought it. It just took up too much space in my tiny bedroom! Pity, as it seems like it woulda have been a reasonably cheap in comparison way to get started.
Dannat - I had a look at the Polarie and it does seem like a simple alternative to get some better landscape photos. My star fields are limited to about 8-10 secs max before starting to trail noticeably, so unless I'm in the country, you can't see too many stars ... Though the moon looks much clearer than I expected of my DSLR. Have you used something like this before? What sort of tripod would you need for this to work well? At the moment I have a very flimsy tripod as I wasn't sure what sort I'd need when I bought the camera, and since I was thinking I'd get a scope eventually to piggyback the camera on ...
Bigjoe - thanks for the honest opinion. It seems like I might just need to be a little patient and save up a bit more before getting something ...
Ideally, I want a scope that is good both for viewing and for AP, but is compact and reasonably simple to use. Maybe that's too tall an order for now! Might have to do some more reading before taking the plunge ...