[coldspace]

Hi Alan,

Newt's on Eq mounts are always going to be painfull for visual observation. Your 8inch newt and eq5 would be agood combination for basic imaging but if you are more intrested in visual go for a dobsonian or fork mounted SCT.

Go for a 12inch truss dob such as an Meade lightbridge and couple it with an Argo navis pointing computer so you can lug it around easilier, or go for one of the SCT such as the Meade LX90 or Celestron CPC types scopes. Get the largest you can manage most people go for the 8, 9.25 or 10 inch sizes. These scopes have excellent goto if you keep the drives trained every now and again. It all depends on the type of astronomy you mainly want to do (visual or imaging) and a big factor is your budjet which can be gobbled up with this hobby if you don't tread carefully, why don't you look at selling those scopes you have if you are not using them and putting the money into a real nice scope that will get lots of use. Nothing worse than equipment gathering dust, I know as I am a culprit of this sometimes. Pity you could not get out to the SPSP and have alook at whats what. Try and get to some local viewing nights at a club near you before you buy anymore gear, and keep asking questions here. Why have you bought 3 scopes in as many weeks? are you not happy with the scope before the last one? I would recommend if you can to get along to a local club which I am sure one is in you area and check out some of the gear getting around and what it is used for before you get jacked of this hobby and loose intrest, please correct me if I am wrong. I have been down this path 8 years ago before I was put back on track by the top members of my local club.

Matt.