Portable Planetary setup

Hi Folks,

I'm solely interested in lunar/planetary observing. I have an excellent C8 Dlx that provides rewarding views under steady skies; which is quite infrequent where I live. The problem is the C8 requires a couple of trips up and down the stairs to setup. I'd like to find something that I can carry out in 1 trip, and is optimized for planetary viewing/tracking. I've come up with the following options and am asking for comments/suggestions/alternatives:

Nexstar 5i
Meade ETX125
C5+ mount(Celestar) with either of the following:
Intes Micro M500
New Intes Micro 6" f/15
Celestron 5" Mak


Thanks in advance,
Bill

I have 2 suggestions:
1 - Are you sure that the unsteady skies aren't due to cooldown? SCT's take a while to equilibrate....
2 - In light of 1 above, and since you really want planetary only, have you considered something along the lines of a 4" refractor? They don't need much cooldown, and will perform as well as the 5" SCT's and Maks you are considering. They are a bit pricier, but not that much.

Aside from the cooldown issue, of the ones you listed I would probably pick the 6"f15 Mak for a planetary only instrument.

Jarad

some thoughts:

If you have any sort of table, or platform with a view of the ecliptic, or if you could place one in your backyard, you would have the ultimate quick setup for the Nexstar or the ETX. You could just carry the scope out with out tripod and set it down -- no leveling or aligning with N (obviously you would still need to run the scopes alignment procedure).

I think most would agree quality control on the Intes scopes is better than the others. For planetary observing at this aperature, with this much obstruction, you must have all optical quality you can get. BUT the 6" on a GEM won't be THAT much smaller than the SCT.

--Ian

I was in the same boat. I'm mostly into the planets and the moon (though I do like DSO's too), but I wanted something that was an easy grab'n'go setup.

My small wide field refractor was easy to haul around...but the Astroview mount was a pain. It's not that heavy but it is rather bulky and not that easy to haul out of my house.

My 8" SCT needs to be kept in my bedroom closet upstairs as I have three small children and I can't afford to leave it out. Hauling it downstairs and out to the back yard was a pain. That's one trip and then another for the accessories. I thought my "small scope" was easy...and it was were it not for having to haul out the mount and tripod as well.

So, I got an ETX105 that I use. I don't even need a tripod. I take it all out in one trip. My scope, in it's case with all my accessories all comes out in one trip and I'm up in no time, viewing.

Nothing could be easier than the ETX series. The scope and mount are all in one so it's one easy to use package. It's not the ideal planetary scope, but it is in the sense that I now take it out and use it. The views of the moon are very sharp and the planets are well defined for the smaller aperture.

Now I take my ETX everywhere, whereas before I wouldn't lug around my SCT. I considered the ETX125, but again, I wanted something portable and I found that the ETX105 was the perfect combination of aperture and portability. Bigger than the 90, but smaller than the 125.

I would suggest the ETX125 out the ones you mentioned only for the convenience of it. You don't need a tripod or mount. You just need a flat surface to put it on. This means you only need the scope and few accessories which are all easily kept in a light case for travel.

An off-axis newtonian in the 6 inch range on a dob mount and an equatorial platform would make the lightest high performance planetary instrument (with tracking) that is currently available. If the eq platform replaced the dob ground board and the OTA had a handle it could be carried in one trip as well.