Telescopes

After my renewed interest in astronomy last year I joined a club, (SPICA in Cagnes sur Mer), which gives access to the 40cm Newton Amateur Telescope of the Côte d’Azur observatory in Calern, above Grasse.

I also purchased, first a 6 inch Vixen Newton on GP2 mount, then a 30cm made by Pierre Desvaux / Dobson Factory) with a mirror from John Nichol.
Then of course a few eyepieces: a 24mm Panoptic, an 11mm Nagler and a 5mm Takahashi LE.

The wooden Dobson design has the advantage of being easy to customize. Here is my setup for finding objects: a Rigel Quickfinder and Takahashi 6x30 optical finder. This combination works fine for me. No GOTO, no digital setting circles! just Erich Karkoschka’s Sky Observer’s Handbook, the 12inch mirror and a dark night.