Too Many Telescopes

I finally have too many telescopes and telescope projects (I think). There are at least 18 scopes and lenses 80mm or larger so I am going to have to sell some of them. It's difficult since they are all different and all have unique attributes. Most are in the picture. Starting from left to right they are:

1. Perkin Elmer 8" F5 four element Astro lens.
2. Military 5" F7.5 four element OTA with full 5" diameter focal plane.
3. Questar 7 with fast camera focuser.
4. Celestron C90 armored spotting scope.
5. Questar 7 surveillance model with focal changer and filter cassette (643mm to 4826mm efl at camera focus).
6. Antique (around 1900) French made 5.5" objective that once belonged to the Vatican observatory.
7. Home made 55mm 6 element eyepiece with 58mm eye lens and 62mm field stop.
8. Questar 3.5 surveillance model (605mm to 2416mm efl at camera focus).
9. Strange zoom lens with 6' f5 achromat, 5" negative fl triplet and 4" achromat.
10. Astro Rubinar 106mm F10 Mak with custom rotating 2" diagonal and finder scope.
11. Home made 100mm f4 wide field scope.
12. Zeiss 6' f7 triplet astrograph.
13. Jaegers 4.25" f5 refractor.

Not shown

14. Celestron C4.5 Newtonian (disassembled).
15. 4" f5 lens (only).
16. 4" f4 lens (matches 11).
17. Apogee 80mm f6.25 ED lens with tube & focuser.
18. Camera lens 400mm fl f7 with 12" diameter corrected focal plane.

For mounts, I have an eq3, two Polaris mounts, two CG5's, and a JMI prototype with 1.5" shafts.

I just can't seem to part with any of them. I think I need Telescopes Anonymous. What should I sell?

P.S. I'm broke and, yes, I'm single.

Tom

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THanks
Herb

Tom,

There may be a 12-step group, Scope Collectors Anonymous, near you. It's for amateurs astronomers who admit they are powerless to stop collecting more telescopes, and who realize they have hit bottom. Tom, you sound ready...:-)

Tom, do you ever *observe* with any of these
scopes? Maybe if you spend some time and energy
*using* these scopes, you'll get to know what
kind of astronomical observing you like
(planets? double stars? astro-photography?
comet-hunting?), and you'll know which scopes to
keep and which ones to sell.

Hey Tom!

You wouldn't happen to have a motor drive for one of those Polaris mounts, would you???

Never hurts to ask.

George

Well, I did see in the rest of the thread that you like to do Lunar and Planetary viewing. The difficult part for us in making recommendations is that there are always subtle issues that attract us to the scopes we collect/use.

I'll put the choice like this: If the above collection were all mine and I was a Lunar and Planetary buff, I'd sell everything. The Questar is probably best suited for Lunar and Planetary but it is a well known fact that these scopes almost never reach thermal equilibrium (probably will change with the new Titanium Questar unit). Take the money reaped from the sales and get a Portaball 8" and 12.5". The 8" does superb planetary work, touches on deep space, and you can always sit down and be comfortable with it. The 12.5" is even better on Planetary and goes a good step deeper into deep space at the same time. If I had to go with only one of the Portaballs, it would be the 8" for sit-down purposes.

Dave

I only have two telescopes (Orion's Starmax 127 and XT-10). My real weakness, however is eyepieces. These things keep my wallet empty and my wife annoyed. Come to think of it I also have a passion for star atlases.

-Tony

Tested the 8" f5 with the yellow (minus blue) filter installed. It was very sharp to 300x and beyond. With the filter out, there is just too much color at 33x.

I figured out how to add 25 pounds of weight to the JMI mount and I can use pipe straps to mount this OTA so I will see what wide field yellow views are like. I still think that the lenses can be respaced to bring the correction into the visual range.

The picture shows the test set up. I removed the back plate of the 5" f7.5 and used the focuser on the 8". I used a Chesire eyepiece to check alignment and it was good. On the right you can see the focuser end of the 5" with the 5" diameter coma corrector. The focuser extends 1" into the 1 3/8" sagita of the last lens.

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Tom R ; Do your self a favor sell your house and get a larger one. Do not let others tell you you have toooo!!! many scopes, you only need more space for them.TOO many scopes? thats like "too much fun? A hole lot of things I have done. But one of them is not have too much fun."Quit your job if it interferes with you observing time. All these people are just jealous of your starter colection.
yours SV