[charsiubau]

My husband and I currently own a 30 year old Celestron 5 inch fork mount SCT, a GSO 10 inch dob and a Televue 85 mm refractor (we have both a portable mount and a Celestron CG5-ASGT mount for the refractor). We would like to replace the old Celestron 5 inch with something larger and that has goto as well as tracking. After considering lots of scopes the Celestron 9.25 SCT looks the most likely - but I'm not sure whether to get the OTA and put it on the CG5 (we can't afford a better mount as well as the OTA at present) or get the CPC.

I'm leaning toward the CPC but am concerned about the weight. I'm small and the advantage of the OTA option is I could probably set it up on my own. I don't have any problem setting up the CG5 now and the C9.25 OTA weighs 9-10 kg which I should be able to manage. But I don't think I could lift the 26 kg CPC onto its tripod without assistance and I'm not even sure my husband could. I'm also concerned about the bulk. Could we fit both the 10 inch dob and the CPC in a Subaru Forester?

An 8 inch SCT is more portable but we're not really interested after owning a 10 inch scope. An exception is the Takahashi Mewlon 210 (OTA only of course) - because we've looked through our club's Takahashi 6 inch Newtonian which compares favourably with our 10 inch!! But I'm reluctant to pay more for a telescope sight unseen that I know not much about and deal with a dealer we don't know and I'd rather not mail order for large expensive items. And we've done the quality bit with the Televue.


BTW I'm not interested in astrophotography - too much time and effort and I'm happy to look at others' images without wanting to do it myself. Video perhaps.

Opinions please - especially from those with personal experience with one of these scopes?