What kind of telescope(s) do you have?

[rodentraiser]

I'm just sort of curious about what telescopes, eye pieces, or equipment you all have here. Where do you go to observe? What do you look for or photograph?

I'm thinking of getting a small scope myself after several years of not having one and horror of horrors, I found out that a copy of Wil Tirion's Sky Atlas is not only out of print, it costs an arm and a leg these days. I have to replace my copy that was stolen several years ago. Believe it or not, I think the scope will cost less than the book!

[cacoseraph]

We have a Celestron Powerseeker 114EQ with just the standard kit and eyepieces that come with it. Nothing too fancy, but pretty decent bang for the buck.

I think it is a 4" or so, and with our best setup we get 600x but the stand is a little too flimsy to keep the scope very still at that level.

We look at the moon and planets, mostly. It is pretty great to see someone get their first "real life" up close view of the moon or planet. Heck, I got kinda emotional the first time I saw the stripes on Jupiter and its Galilean moons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilean_moons

Eventually we are going to upgrade to a more serious scope so we can see some of the Messier objects or stuff like that. And get REALLY nice views of the stuff we already look at.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_objects

[StarMountainKid]

Years ago I had an 8 inch Newtonian reflector. Was pretty big and heavy. Something like this is what I'd like to have:

http://www.telescopes.com/telescopes/catadioptric-telescopes/celestronnexstar8setelescopeultimatepackage.cfm

[cacoseraph]

Years ago I had an 8 inch Newtonian reflector. Was pretty big and heavy. Something like this is what I'd like to have:

http://www.telescope...matepackage.cfm

Oowee! That is a nice scope! I think our next one is definitely going to include the autoalign functionality. We seemed to have dinged our sighter scope early on into our ownership and aligning onto exact targets has been quite hard ever since. I think automating would increase our enjoyment tremendously!

[rodentraiser]

You guys have such cool telescopes! What I WANT is a 12" Discover Dobsonian. What I think I am going to GET is probably going to be something like the Orion E something 70mm f/5 refractor. I simply can't afford the $1500 for the larger scope and with my back the way it is right now, the lighter, the better. Plus I would have to carry it up and down three floors. But I'm a little worried about going to one of the local observing sessions. Do you think they'll laugh when they see a little scope like I'll probably have?

[StarMountainKid]

I'm sure you'll be welcome. They all probably had telescopes like yours in the beginning.

[Arbenol]

Guang Sheng 10" Newtonian.

Difficult to keep the image steady at high magnification but really comes into it's own for picking out detail on the moon or planets. The sight of Jupiter and Saturn are unforgettable in it.

Having said that, it's not exactly portable and I would get a smaller, more manageable scope for seeing star clusters or nebulae.

[F3SS]

I researched the crap out of telescopes last year. Nothing came of it. Turns out there aren't very many brick and mortar telescope dealers out there that don't involve a serious road trip and I really wanted to get my hands on one. Hands on is the only way I feel my research is complete. Anyways, when I do it must be computerized and can adapt to a dslr camera. IIRC, $800 or so could get me there.