Quote:
Originally Posted by neversommer
Ok I fell in love with this one from andrews
http://www.andrewscom.com.au/images/...50x750peq3.jpg
Skywatcher 150 x 1000P EQ3-2
Super low price!
$399.00 AUD
Freight free Australia-wide!
You save A$400 off competitor's website price as @ 07-12-08!
=Yes! HALF competitor's price=
-or-
$549.00 AUD with dual axis motor drives and hand controller
Freight free Australia-wide!
Excellent quality 150mm x 1000mm full focal length Parabolic (P) primary mirror Newtonian reflector on the world-famous EQ3-2 medium duty equatorial mount with adjustable height aluminium tripod legs.
But i dont know what size the lens it has there are no details and on the other sites i cant find any clue wether is 1.25 or 2 as Ian Robinson mentioned.
The Guan Sheng one has a smaller focal lenght but plossl eyepiece lenses..They sound very high quality.
Those ones with the guan sheng
6mm, 9mm, 15mm and 25mm
I want to make today my choice..lets stay with andrews website for the moment.
I am willing to spend 400$ on a telescope..Which one? the 150mm skywatcher sounds very good.
What you guys think? |
Go for it , 6" is always better than 5" in aperture.
- is a pretty basic GEM (the EQ3-2) , the optional dual axis drives will be very handy for tracking stuff and slewing about from one object to another , and if you decide to have a crack at piggy backing a camera or photographing objects (planets, stars, moon, fuzzys at prime focus) later, only thing is COMA at f5 (all fast newtonians and dobs have coma !!!! so you may want to upgrade the focusor later to a 2" low profile crayford and invest in a Baader MFCC or Tele Vue Paracorr Visual to eliminate coma and to flatten the focal plane (not a huge deal at now if you are just looking through it).
A 2" focusor will give you a lot more options than a 1.25" focusor - a low profile crayford focusor is much better than a not so low profile rack and pinion focusor which will beat most helical focusor (unless you want ULTRA LOW PROFILE in the focusor --- sometimes this is needed) ie a 2" focusor allows the use of a coma corrector lens (they are all 2" OD), gives better imaging capacity (less vignetting at prime focus) and you can use any eyepiece commercially available (the standards are 2" , 1.25" and 0.96" OD).
.... Andrews might change the focusor for you to a 2" crayford or a 2" rack and pinion if you ask them before shipping (for a reasonable price).
Important thing - It'll get ya started and it's cheap as chips too !!
You can always upgrade to a better GEM and tripod later - plenty of good GEMs thatll handle a 6" newt + camera and will be solid as a rock and are damb accurate when tracking stars and other objects and have lots of advanced features including GOTO (which is great for the lazy), though you start spending REAL money to get them.
Give Andrews a call and ask what comes with it (what eyepieces ? some nice 1.25" plossyls will be OK at this stage , a 2x barlow would be nice , you might want to add one or two extra eyepieces and a barlow if it doesn't have a barlow).