Despite protests from the "Minister for Finance", I am planning the purchase of a new scope, and would love to get some feedback from those of you who may have had some experience with the various options that plague me.
While I will primarily do visual work with it, I want to be able to move into some astrophotoghy as well in the future. Nothing obsessive (yet). I also need the scope to be portable, as 3 or 4 unfortunately placed street lights make observing from my house a pipe-dream.
I already own a 4" newt which I have had since 1986 (no prizes for guessing why), and am comfortable with an equatorial mount. I used one of my club's loan-a-scopes, and found out that I really don't like fork mounts - some of the things I can locate without a GOTO happen to be very close to celestial south, and my neck doesn't stretch that far!
My budget is $2500-$3000, and research to date indicates the following candidates:
- Skywatcher 10" (SW252Sky) - $2995 from Sirius Optics. Includes GOTO EQ6 mount.
- Meade LXD-75 10N - $2750 from Star Optics. This is a Schmidt-Newtonian, which I have never seen.
- C10N from York Optical on a CG-5 Equatorial. $2550.
I have also been told that Orion make a 10" Newt which is better than the Skywatcher, but about $1000 more.
Can anybody comment on these, especially the quality of the mounts, which reading these forums certainly confirms is as important as the optics.
Note I have steered away from equatorially mounted SCTs mainly because they seem more expensive, but if anybody has suggestions in that regard, I am open to ideas.