[mura_gadi (Steve)]

Hello and welcome,

All scopes have strengths and weakness, so, I'd strongly suggest reading about scope design. Some pretty dedicated people have shared a lot of knowledge on just about everything astronomy based.

Scopes:
They vary greatly in cool-down times - the time it takes for the mirrors to reach ambient temperature. The most awesome scope is going to suck if you have to wait two hours for it to acclimate. The newts can offer great aperture at $1 per inch of glass ratio - but weigh a ton in the larger sizes. Large aperture also means a large slice of atmosphere which is generally bad for detailed viewing. That's why you'll see some ppl rave about a little 4" refractor being great for planets and as a "grab and go" scope as well.

No scope does it all, so reading what's bad about a scope design is just as important as reading what's good about it.

Eyepieces:
Budget them in they will cost you your other arm and leg. Read about exit pupil and eye relief, esp. the second if you wear glasses(and the age of your eyes). The faster your F ratio the hard your eyepieces have to work. F5 or less, you start having to buy EP's that carry addition glass (weight/price) to correct the light cone or put up with EP's that may carry significant distortion effects around the edges of the viewing field. F8 or more and a lot of cheap eyepieces start working very well.

Easy of setup/breakdown:
Think about how much you want to lift around, health/strength, and just how exhausted your going to be at 1am in the morning when you pack it all up and go home from a dark site trip. Or if you have to lug it up two flights of stairs and another 50m to/from the backyard.

Mount:
Get a good mount, you'll swap telescopes more often than mounts - normally. The EQ6Pro was a good suggestion, hold 18kilo and costs around $1900(Astro Anarchy). There are different types of mounts they too have their pro's and con's.

If your budget is 4k and you want to buy a camera in the package as well, your going to have to compromise a little somewhere, or be prepared to buy some items later. If your willing to buy second hand, be patient(most important!) and try and get someone from your area who has experience with astronomy to view the items with you.

Not only are are the scopes and eyepieces highly variable, you also see differently to other ppl, just like the world, the image projected at the EP is interpreted differently by different people.




See this being a really high reply rate posting!
Good luck
Steve