[Jerous]

Hi all, first time poster long time lurker.

I'll give you a bit of a background to where my family is at.

We've been into looking at the night sky since August or so last year. Myself and my youngest son have maintained the passion since then, we make it to various local Astronomy nights when we can. We followed the sensible advice and bought binoculars and a small tripod for them. We feel we are ready to push further now.

My son and I know the major constellations and he delights in looking up which planets are in the sky and when.

We've maintained the focus and passion for a while now so it's time to jump in with an equipment purchase.

A few things about us. Don't want anything big and bulky, if it's too much hassle, it'll sit and rot, I need something low maintinence. So I think a Dobsonian is probably not a good idea, although I am aware they are the best bang for the buck.

Photography has some appeal further down the track, my son loves pictures and I know he'd get a kick out of capturing images, doesn't have to be professional quality though...

Here is the twist. We have family travelling over from the USA next month. So I was thinking of getting them to pick something up for us, considering the Aussie dollar ATM. Originally I was thinking of picking up a CELESTRON NEXSTAR 6SE SCHMIDT -CASSEGRAIN but I've realized it's too big for the plane and you don't want optics in anything but hand luggage.

So here is my dilemma. I am looking to spend about $800-1000 in total, inc mount. I need to pick up something compact enough to travel on a plane for the US with people that are non astronomy lovers.

Should I just bite the bullet and pay for an all in one package from an Australian shop? Or is there value buying something like a Celestron C6-A-XLT Optical Tube Assembly OTA and picking up the mount here? How much will the cost blow out to fully kit up, inc stand, if the tube is $629?

Not sure what the best scope to target is, I want something compact but still get to some deep space objects.

I am not into brands, I am not fussed at all about what brand it is as long as the quality is there.

Thanks in advance.