Telescopes I have owned and a few words about them...

Celestron 8" Star Hopper

This was my first scope. It was sold to help finance my LX50 purchase, I have missed it ever since.

I highly recommend the SH8 as a great first scope to anyone. Easy to use, easy to move, affordable,

and the unique balancing system and excellent mirror cell put it in a class by itself for commercial dobs.

Meade 8" LX50

My main scope and the scope I have many $$ tied up in. I have the Magellan II and a Pictor 208XT

imager/guider to go with it. I have 2 Olympus OM-1s and more astrophotography stuff than I can

shake a checkbook at. I really like the scope, but lately it gets a bit less use now that I have an ETX

and a large dob. I use it mainly for astrophotography so it only gets out on the best nights when I can

really stay up late. I recently took it with me to the Grand Canyon star party (ugh!!). Immediately

thereafter I purchased the ETX for any more airline trips I may be taking! Overall I am very pleased

with it though, it is an impressive piece of equipment for the money.

Meade 90mm ETX Astro

My little grab-n-go ETX. This is a great little scope for travel or just for taking a quick planetary

tour after dinner. It has limited aperture so it is best for local objects like the planets and Moon, but

it does have excellent top notch optics and I also get some daytime use with this scope. I plan

on getting a solar filter for this one since it is so portable and you don't need much aperture for

solar viewing. Very nice scope to have in your arsenal.

Coulter 13.1" Odyssey 1

My latest addition, I just picked this one up from a local amateur astronomer. It is a monster but is

easy to handle being a 2 piece dob. I plan on adding some wheels and just rolling it out of the garage

for viewing. These scopes are a nice starting point light bucket. The addition of a nice focuser, a telrad,

some ventilation holes in the rear cell, and a set of wheels will probably make me fall in love with this

big old dob. "Big Red's" optics appear to be fairly decent and during a brief few moments of still air

last night I resolved details on Jupiter I have never seen before. Dobs are great, everyone should have

one!