Then I found Vic Maris' article 'New to Astronomy' (since then updated but the idea is the same: https://www.stellarvue.com/new-to-astronomy/) and I completely connected to that. Get a simple but good quality telescope with a stable simple mount and learn the skies with wide-field optics (small fast scopes)!
At that time Vic Maris' company Stellarvue had a special offer of their Nighthawk, an 80mm doublet refractor with stable tripod and basic
But with a big birthday coming up, I decided that I should allow myself another scope, one that really gives me something different from my little refractor. That of course had to be a Big
At the various star camps I did have the opportunity to look through several big dobs from 12" to 24" and everything in between and knew that it would give me the views that I could not get from my refractor. It also gave me a shortlist of requirements for the Big
I saw some absolutely beautiful home made dobs which I would have bought in an instance, but also realised that I would not be able to build myself - I am an avid DIY person but I just know that precision is not my 'thing'. So it had to be something built by someone else. I started looking at the various options; how big do I want to go, can I afford new or do I want to look at second hand, what about go-to, DSC etc.
I didn't want stepladders so that limited me to 12" - 15". Learning from previous experience I knew that I would be better off choosing simple setup but high quality so the shortlist became very short. Excellent optics, simple build, large bearings for smooth operation.
So I read up about every
Then the wait began... I continued reading up on everything truss
Throughout October and November I had the occasional email conversation with Adam from Taurus 'yes all is still going to plan' which typically ended up me buying more accessories to be included... But mid December an email arrived from Adam - we're about to pack your scope for shipping - Yippee! Will it arrive before Christmas? Fingers crossed.
I followed the tracking every single day and on 23rd December I got a phone call from the couriers that they had a shipment to clear at the border. They needed some extra information for the clearance. This being 23rd
On 29 December at lunchtime a Big parcel arrived, a nice wooden box, 40Kg worth of telescope! But only one parcel (of two). Oh no, they didn't deliver the truss poles! Let's hope and prey that they will get delivered as well today .... But no, the truss poles missed the connection to the distribution centre and I will have to wait until tomorrow. And worst of it all, absolutely stunning sky so it could have been first light with Jupiter close to a crescent moon, Mars, Neptune and Uranus all on view.
Anyway at least I got to unbox part one. The wooden box is an excellent protector for the content - everything is super sturdy inside. All the parts are wrapped beautifully so no damage on any of the components. The oak varnished wood looks absolutely stunning and everything fits together as it should. I even managed to get the DSC working with Sky Safari, pretending to align with Polaris and then directing me to Aldebaran and M1 (obviously :-)). I chose the 'Pro' mirror which comes with a test sheet and that seems to be ok to me. I can see one tiny blemish on the mirror but for the rest it looks spotless (apart from the centre spot of course).