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As an avid amateur astronomer it's important to have optics that are not only capable but work the way you want them to work. When looking for a telescope my criteria were:

• Transportable in a small car
  This relegated me to something smaller than your average 8-10 inch Newts..
• Capable of imaging
  Ok, I needed a driven equatorial mount
• Simple to setup/teardown in the dark
  These days they're all pretty simple to assemble so I had lot's of 'scope'
• It had to be stable.
  Enough mass and capacity to carry what I need it to carry without wiggling all over the place..

My main scope
I settled on a used fork-mounted Celestar 8 as there are piles of them out there. The OTA must have been built on a Wednesday (a GOOD Wednesday) as the optics are tack-sharp and come into collimation simply and just stay there (see some simple modifications below). They are compact, fairly light and will treat you right if you reciprocate. With 8" of aperture they make all of the Messier objects and many IC/NGC objects available to me.

To see some modifications I've done to the optical tube CLICK HERE.

My second scope
For a wide-field scope and imager I decided on a Stellarvue Nighthawk II. Stellarvue makes incredible small refractors and this one is no exception (My images). It's a highly corrected achromat so it really needs a minus-violet filter (later). For now the NH2 is mounted on the C8 using a set of 4" guidescope rings from Ken's Rings of Louisiana. Also, the dovetail on the tube is also from Ken's Rings. He has good prices, ships promptly, uses good material and his design can't be faulted.

My mount
I ended up with a SkyWatcher HEQ5. This is light enough to pack around and has enough capacity to do what I want it to do. Of course, I modified it a bit. With loads around 20lb it is VERY stable. Imaging I pack about 8lb more onto it which does make it a bit more sensitive; but not much.



I carry around several eyepieces none of which cost me more than $99.

Meade 4000 QX 36mm	Great eyepiece at f/10, not so great below f/8. A keeper.
Televue Plossls	I have a 15mm, 20mm and 25mm. Tack sharp and very contrasty. The eye relief of these longer focal lengths is quite adequate and I can live with the 50 degree AFOV just for the performance. Winners!
Burgess/TMB Planetary	I have a 5mm and 9mm. Lots of eye relief and field. Some secondary reflections on REALLY bright objects off-axis but very sharp.
Antares Ortho	9mm... super sharp eyepiece and super inexpensive.
Celestron Ultima Barlow	Best bang for the buck in my humble opinion

Scope setup from the side


The working end
Setup/Teardown
This kit fits my Toyota Yaris; there is stuff floating around everywhere (sigh). Setup and alignment takes about 15 minutes in the dark using a red LED flashlight.

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