Thanks for the encouragement and advice everyone
Regarding chairs, I actually spent this week when it was raining building myself a denver observing chair
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...ad.php?t=48534
It was really comfy actually observing through the telescope, and even the finder scope is really good because it's a right angle one.
Where the pain came from was clutching my star charts in one hand, and bending over almost backwards and twisting side to side to try and find new targets to look at. When I was observing a lot of scorpio and sagitarius was almost directly overhead, and I was finding a lot of my targets by eye before trying to line up the scope.
It could be a bit of technique too then maybe? When people use non guided telescopes do they almost exclusively starhop using there finder scopes; or by looking at the sky with the naked eye a lot, or a combination of both?
I found that even with the finderscope or the low power eyepiece there were so many stars I was easily getting a bit disorientated if I didn't keep checking the lay of the land by looking up
I probably just need more practice, something I'm looking forward too
Kind regards
Ant