Hi all.
Thank you so much for all your replies. I finally took the plunge and got a cheapish telescope. Yay. Unfortunately my mates mate had already sold his by the time I called him so that was a bummer. However, I managed to find a similar one on ebay and managed to get it for $100 (Tasco Lumuinova 114/900).
I picked it up on Saturday and checked it out during daylight. The finderscope and tube seemed to be aligned so all was set for the night time viewing. The idiot in me seemed to have been let out since I decided to dismantle the tube and tripod and put it away for safe keeping. In the process I think I bumped the finderscope (which is a tiny 6x24 with only one place it is attached to the main tube) since when I brought it out at night, the tube was looking somewhere completely different to where the finderscope was pointed. Managed to finally figure out how different they were and compensated for the difference. With a small margin of error, I could then point the finderscope, have the object at a certain place in the cross hair (not middle) and be able to see it in the main eyepiece. yippy!! Liftoff
I spent yesterday daytime aligning the finderscope to the tube (yoohoo youtube) and managed to get everything in order but at night found the two to be out by a small margin again
however it wasnt as bad as the night before.
I love this cheapee. Saw Saturn in all its glory.. though it was really small but I could still see the rings clearly and the darkness that separates the rings from saturn. wow .. amazing.
My equatorial mount is still not properly aligned however I did lean it up to 34 degrees (Sydney being 33.8 degrees below equator). Oh btw I am so loving the fine tune knobs. they are soo much easier than using my hand on the tube to move it to go to the object once it has drifted away.
The telescope comes with H20mm,H12.5mm, SR4mm and a 3x Barlow
The H20mm and H12.5mm are superb however the SR4mm is almost unsuable since the field of view is almost a pinhead. The barlow is soo bad that it seems that there is a black cloth in front of it (even with the 20mm eyepiece). Also, the tripod legs are held together with the accessory/eyepiece tray so have to be very careful
Would have loved tripod legs like that for camera tripods
All in all I am really pleased with my latest addition to my astronomy arsenal ..
