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Thanks Barx and Kal.
I'm summarising from this the short focal length combined with a possibly crappy barlow lens is the real gotchya with these telescopes and the lens/mirror is NOT (generally speaking, at least for this brand). The upside is better light gathering power than a longer tube....so the next basic question is:
would a (physically) longer telescope, at less magnification be the go?
The Celestron 76 reflector DSE sell has 658mm optical tube and a 700mm focal length. Of course the magnification is less (the 4mm lens gives x175 instead of x250), but am I right in saying there's no (?) barlow lens, or one that won't distort too much? That telescope is only $136. The other downside I guess is it looks like the light gathering is less on the longer tube too (365 vs 265) - is that a big issue?
While I like the Dobsonian idea, they are lot dearer, and a couple of sites I checked were out of stock anyway.....yeah....call me an immediate gratification junkie, but I'm happy to fork out for a cheap 'tester' and buy a better one later.
ps. Kal - I checked and I think the difference between the StarTracker and the Powerseeker is 12mm and 20mm eyepiece vs. 4mm and 20mm eypieces respectively.
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