New telescope in the house

I'm pretty sure most of us have hobbies other than guitar. One of my other hobbies is astronomy. Here's a picture of my latest telescope. I've wanted one of these for as long as I can remember and finally found myself in a position where I could afford one. This is the Quester 3.5" 50th Anniversary Model Telescope. It's pretty much the standard 3.5" Questar except it comes with all of the options as well as the Quartz optics that are not available in the other models. Now, if only the clouds and rain would go away.

RickT

Wow Rick. That is a beauty Rare and with impressive specs! And a motor drive! All you have to do is align the axis

- Jos

I just got my first telescope a little less than a year ago. Unfortunately, other than recognizing the name Questar, I don't know much about them, but it looks like a seriously nice scope!!

I hear you on the clear skies...the only night in the past couple of weeks we've had nice clear skies was the night my daughter broke her leg, and I got home from the hospital so late and I was completely wiped out!

I just recently got a couple of decent eyepieces, though...a couple of the new Explore Scientific 82 degree waterproof series. Well, the 11mm is still on backorder, but I got the 6.7mm and had it out one evening...a serious improvement over the plossls I bought with the scope. I'm anxious to put them to some serious observing!!

Glad to see other people interested in Astronomy. I use a pair of 11x70 binoculars for star gazing duties. I attach it to a tripod and it works great. Nice telescope , although I am not familiar with the brand. Here's to dark skies !

Here in VA, clear skies have been a rare thing this year! And dark skies...well, I live in a city of around 40,000...not that big, but since I live close to down town, I'm in a red zone! Fortunately, in 20-30 minutes I can get out to pretty dark skies...yellow/green zone. I just joined the local club which has a green zone site about 30 mins away.

Scopewise, I have an Orion XT8i (8" dob) and a Vixen R130SF (5" short tube reflector on an alt-az mount). I recently got some decent 10x50 binocs with a monopod since my daughter and I are going to the Grand Canyon with my folks later this summer. Unfortunately, we just realized we'll be there over a full moon!