Rod, These shots were taken the week before I put together
my version of the enviro-mower. Re the scope, it's not really that I changed my mind, but it's time to move on. For light-polluted backyard observing it's planets mainly, which needs power + apeture. My newly beefed up fan powered Dob will do nicely for the time being. Then maybe another ED refractor. (But I'll wait till they bring out 5 & 6" versions.)
Must be Xmas, Chris. People are too scared to buy themselves presents, especially conspicuous ones like a telescope.
Geoff, the EQ5 will be up for sale at some point in the near future, but I have two scopes I use it with at the moment.
I took the ED80 & the EQ5 along to a party tonight. I showed people Mars at around 85x. Not many were impressed. I could see surface features easily, but "It's just a dot" people kept saying. But then I swung over to the Orion Neb. That got a few oohs and aahs with the 19mm Panoptic + DGM NBP filter (this is in a fairly light polluted Melbourne suburb), and some wows through the Stratus 13mm with no filter. Sparked quite a bit of interest in astronomy.
