One of my favourite topics...TELESCOPES

Every astronomer is the same. Other than observing and imaging the night sky, the other favourite thing us astronomers like to do is peruse magazines (and the web for you people living in the now) for equipment. I have spent some serious time doing the same. There is just something about looking at ads upon ads of astro gear, seeing a new product being announced and reading all mag and online reviews . Then there are those of us who like to "experiment" with all manner of scopes. While I have not tried all manner of scopes, but I have had my fair share of scopes go through my collection. I will give you a brief run through of the different types of scopes. Basically they can be divided into three broad categories, refractors (scopes which use lenses to focus incoming light), reflectors (scopes which make use of mirrors to collect distant starlight) and catadioptric (scopes that utilize both lenses and mirrors to collect and focus light). The only type of scope I have yet to try are catadioptrics. Anyway below are impressions of some of the scopes I have owned over the years. I have written some pretty detailed reviews for some of them that I will post in the coming future.

Celestron Cometron 40 (40mm f/20 refractor). First up is my one and only firstscope, which I have kept till today. It is a very small scope by today's standards, but then again the skies were much darker back in the day. This is one of them comet scopes with the orange plastic tubes. Orange Celestron scopes that were sold during the Halley's Comet flyby period. Came with a small 5x24 finder on a metal bracket and had two eyepieces, a 25mm Kellner and a 8mm HM. Scope was made in Japan.

Explorer 76mm f/9.2. Bought this dark blue newtonian on an alt-az mount when I came back to Brisbane in 2001. Comes with a small 5x24mm finder and 3 eyepieces. Showed me what I missed with my firstscope and gave me firsthand views of M57, the ring nebula and M27, the dumbbell nebula. I was so impressed with this, I got an Orion 0.965" (it came with a 1.25" focuser with a 0.965" adapter, but 0.965" eyepieces) Skyglow filter.

Explorer 6" f/11. One of those barlow in the focuser newtonian's which stretched its shortened focal length. Mirror was spherical and was only good for low powered views. Came with three eyepieces, a 25mm Kellner and a 9mm and 6mm eyepieces. Views were okay for low power but was next to useless for anything over 100x). Was very hard to collimate so I sold the OTA and kept the EQ mount.

Celestron/Vixen 6" f/5. This was the substitute OTA for the above-mentioned. Got a beat up OTA with no accessories, but the mirrors were in excellent condition. Did not come with a finder, so I put the 6x30mm finder from the above scope on this. Superb figure parabolic optics gave impressive views of the planets, plus its short focal length yielded superb wide angle views of the southern milky way.

Orion 80mm f/5 Short Tube. Fantastic first grab and go. I bought the OTA second hand off Astromart so it did not come with any accessories other than the 6 x 26 correct image finders on those excellent spring loaded finder brackets. Great view field views of objects (gave me the best low powered views of the North American Nebula and the Veil Nebula) and fairly decent on planets up to about 100x.

SkyWatcher 102mm f/5 refractor. I loved the Orion 80ST so much and I went out and got a second hand 4" scope from Synta. Big mistake. This scope, while okay for low powered deep sky views did not give as good planetary views (due to chromatic aberration which was more noticeable due to its increased aperture). Also it was heaps heavier so it did not do well on my photo tripod. Also only came with a 6 x 26 finder.

Guan Sheng 10' f/5. My first BIG scope and my workhorse when I go to dark skies. Fantastic bang for the buck as it came with two 1.25" eyepieces, a 25mm Plossl and a 10mm Plossl and an achromatic straight through 8x50mm finderscope on the spring loaded. This scope went really deep and showed me color (and not just green but rusty hues) in M42, the Orion nebula.

Orion 4.5" f/4 StarBlast. Fantastic little do it all scope. Picked this one up on my holiday to California in 2007. This was the best grab and go scope PERIOD. I could use it on a whim. And it used a parabolic mirror so images were nice, sharp and color free. gave better planetary views than the 80ST. Came with a nice Orion Explorer II eyepieces, a 17mm, 10mm and 6mm.

I have also bought and tried two semi vintage 60mm scopes off e bay, one of which was stoppered down and had gave horrendously dim night time view (Yosco), and also a circle T short orange tube scope on a spindly mount (which proved sufficient for low powered views) and owned a 15x70mm binoculars that inspired me so much, I replaced it with a lightweight 20 x 80. Both are exceptional performers, had multicoated optics and were hand holdable for short periods. Nothing beats binoculars for wide field dark sky views and also for the ultimate grab and go setup...PERIOD!