SingAstro

Gary wrote: Glad to befriend an enthusiast from Malaysia on a business trip.

that was me. nice to meet you

spent the weekend looking at some tubes and more or less has my eyes set on a 6" cat. mount wise i'm currently lusting over the new ioptron zeq25.

lin00b: The most airline portable scope i feel (in my opinion) is a 80-90mm refractor with retractable dew shield. (the dew shield can slide inwards and outwards, hence making the overall tube length shorter) Speaking from personal experience, when i was young i lugged a Celestron 150mm Newtonian w...

I'm more or less full time at the rural location. I only go to the city (kl, sg) once in a blue moon. I dont plan on observing in the cities. most of my observing will be at the rural area. why i want an airline portable set (and yes, plan to carry the whole set for my trips) is for oversea travel t...

for mounts, would a wedge on an alt/azi be comparable to an eq? does GEM and eq. mount mean the same thing? whats the difference? currently i'm looking at some lightweight mounts such as ioptron ieq30. any opinion on this? from youtube vids it seemed lightweight and portable. any suggestion on simil...

thanks gary, having some bad experience, i m not keen to buy sensitive optical instrument online, and expensive optical instrument at that. locally, i think only sg has a vibrant enough astronomy community that there are various used equipment coming in, i'm keeping an eye out at buy and sell, but n...

i have a feeling 6" might be the practical limit as well, and 8" pushing it (weight wise as well as pocketbook wise). will know when i drop by the shop in a week or 2 to see it physically. maybe even 6" is too much and i end up getting a 5 or a 4" getting quoted a c6 XLT starbrig...

are there any difference between meade LX90, LX200 and celestron c8? (all 8 inches of aperture)

indeed it is easy to go into analysis paralysis with the wide variety of scopes around. I agree the best way is probably to go and look at various scopes. unfortunately the area i'm in, astronomy is virtually unknown [smilie=crying3.gif] - which is sad, cause they dont know what they are missing wit...

thank you for the advise. currently my aim is definitely in the order of 1. DSO (nebulas, galaxies, clusters), 2. planets, 3. stars. not really keen on a dobs. from what i understand, 1. it does not upgrade well to AP - while i dont plan to do AP for now, i'd like to keep that option open. 2. "...