Over the past few years I have tried and used a variety of telescopes. From an 8" /10 Meade LX200, to a 7" f/4 Mustakuv-Newtonian to my current William Optics Zenithstar 105 (Field Use) and my latest telescope, A Takahashi TOA 130.
While the larger telescopes had plenty of light gathering power, they either lacked in good optics/mount(LX200) or had good optics that were hard to maintain collimation (Intes Mak-Newt). I have moved to smaller telescopes, with good optics, and little to no tweaking. Living in the Pacific Northwest, I am limited to a few clear dark nights, so I would rather spend my time using the telescopes rather than tweaking them. So in that vane, this page will change over time as I upgrade my optics to bigger better telescopes.
I will stick to refractors, as they are the least trouble to get up and running, whether at home in the observatory or away to the dark places I go to.
Main Telescope
The TOA-130 a 5.1"/130mm APO Refractor. This is one of the finest telescopes made today. Made in Japan by Takahashi. One of the most color free refractors on the market, The views are just spectacular! I cannot say enough good things about this refractor. I think I will have this one for a while.
The only thing that would tempt me to change would be more aperture, and then it would have to be to the TOA-150.. :)
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901mm / 35.5 inches
4" with Camera Angle Adapter
1000mm
130mm / 5.1 inch
F/7.7
10kg / 22 lbs
0.89"
12.3
Ortho-Apochromat Air Spaced Triplet
Main Mount
In my observatory I have a Losmandy G-11 with Gemini. For the field I have a GM-8. I have converted the GM-8 to use the Gemini as well. I use one Gemini For both Mounts. This works well, since I am cannot be in two places at once.
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