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In all the"Newbie" talk there is little discussion about mounts, lots of talk about OTA and eye pieces, yet little discussion about mounts. Being new to astronomy I purchased what I thought was good scope, a Celestron 130. Well the OTA is really very nice, but the mount was a pile of c$&p! The mount is so poorly constructed that it's almost impossible to use the scope.
I mention this as I was fortunate enough to secure a beautiful Mizar mount from the IIS classified. I placed the Celestron 130 atop the Mizar..... Magic! The scope performed flawlessly now it had the benefit of a superb Japanese mount.
My suggestion is this..... don't worry about what scope you want, as there are many great scopes on the market. Focus on the mount, spend 2/3 of you total $1k - $1.5k on the mount then everything else will sort of look after itself. Keep an eagle on the IIS classified and flea-bay remember flea-bay is littered with a 1001 duds. Spend the greater proportion of your time in enthusiast sites. On the other hand if your comfortable with retail, give the guys at Bintel a called.
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