Hi Colin--
Here's my 2 cents worth. Without a car, I think you'll really have to
downgrade your aperture. Even a lightweight 8" scope (like a NexStar8,
which I own), needs to be in some sort of case. There's probably no way
around 50/60/70 pounds by the time you add eyepieces, etc.
Suggestion 1: Good binos. I've got two pairs of binos (10x50 and 20x80).
The smaller ones can be easily handheld and can pick up quite a lot. The
larger ones need a parallelogram/tripod, but all that will go into a
reasonable duffel. I recently dragged this rig out to Hawaii.
Suggestion 2: A small scope. I've also got the Celestron 102 Short Tube
which travels quite nicely. There are also ETX-90s/125s and NexStar 5's.
All of these scopes will move around pretty well. Short tube is OK for
fuzzies, the others will give decent planetary views as well.
Suggestion 3: Forget long exposure photography. No matter what sort of
scope you use, you need serious mass to come up with a stable platform.
Suggestion 4: The best scope for you is the scope you USE. If you dread
schlepping a scope/pod around for a few minutes of viewing, then go for
something smaller and lighter. As you can see, I've got a variety of stuff,
but I still enjoy dragging the binos out into the yard for a quick peek.
Have fun!
>As I've previously hinted, I don't have a car. My contradictory
>telescope would need to be manageable enough to take on a train if I
>decided to travel somewhere dark, but would want to be useful enough
>to pick up as much light in the city as possible. I'm not sure it
>would have to have goto features, there's virtually nothing here to
>see to go to, but some kind of automatic tracking would be nice so
>that I could do longer exposure photographs.
>I've read that some of the telescopes in the aperture range I'm
>thinking about (say 8 - 10 inches) weigh 50 pounds or more. Is that
>always the case, or is there some variation, especially with the
>tripod weight?
--
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