Limerick Astronomy Club

Hi All,
was hoping to pick the brains of those with more experience than I.
As I stated in my introductory post I was given a Bresser Skylux Nl 70/900 refractor as a present by a good friend of mine who know I was looking for my first scope. This is the onle that was on sale in Lidl not so long ago and while its fine and I have been abel to see things like Jupiter and the 4 Galilean moons and some nice views of the moon and other nfo I was hoping to get a larger scope. I am not working so cost is a big factor and I reckon I can stretch to €300. I have been looking through the various add sites and have come across http://www.donedeal.ie/for-sale/hobbies/4030887 was wondering if any of you had any comments or suggestions?

Hi Colum

For around the 300 Euro mark I would recommend the following scope

http://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/pro ... /39/type/a

An 8" dobsonian will give great views and years of fun. It will blow away a small refractor. You might even be able to pick one up second hand one if the budget is a bit tight (try the IFAS site)

John

Cheers for that John I think a few weeks (months) of saving and I could get that seems to have a lot of features fan, Crayford focuser and such.

Regards
Colum

Yip, I'd second that.
A 8 inch reflector vs a 4 inch refractor, its a no brainer really, a factory perfect 8 inch dob is the way to go.

I'd third that. If your not used to scopes you may think. Holy cow. That's too big but really.. It's not!
The Dob is the way to go.
Plus if you order from telescope house and tell em SAC sent you their way they may just knock a few euro off.

Cheers for that guys I have narrowed it down to 8" gso of the 8" skywatcher dob from Ktec would cost roughly the same after shipping.
Looking at how the OTA is mounted to the base I am leaning a bit towards the GSO as the as that cradle design is already causing the geek side of me to have ideas about using an Arduino and using either an IMU, digital compass or rotary encoders to give a ALT AZ readout (which I have seen done on youtube videos) to a display and its not much of a leap from there to add servos for a goto design that can be controlled from a laptop I have most of the stuff to do a proof of concept. I reckon the hard part would be getting the software stellarium in this case to tell the micro controller where to go and the micro controller to tell stellurium where the scope is pointed I know the both can be done.
From looking at the pictures it would not be as easy with the skywatcher not saying I could not do it well dont have the money yet for the scope do I will just obsess of it for the next while.

while you're at it, have a look at our shops page
http://www.shannonsideastronomyclub.com ... _shops.htm
scroll down to the secondhand section, you might find a good used scope deal.

Hi Guys
Long time no post. Well things have changed I got a great X-mass present off a good friend of mine who had a Bresser Messier r-102 on a mon-2 think it was a lidl job he got as an impulse buy but never developed the interest nor did his kids so rather than it gathering dust he gave it to me and I was having fun with it loved the views I was getting of Jupiter the moon and such. I was still on the look out for a 8" that I could use on the mount but anything I saw for sale was too far out of my range as I have said previously I am currently not working and I could not bring myself to drop almost €400 on a GSO 8" dob or €300 on a 8" TS OTA. Well this week end trawling a ping in my inbox I had set up an alert on adverts.ie for any telescopes and a very nice young man from Adare was parting out his LXD75 so I took the OTA off him for €100 which I think was a good deal. Now just have to wait for some clear skies.
Regards
Colum