today I finally pulled the trigger on some new gear. I wish I had more EP time to justify spending the money, but the new gear will definitely help us see more, even if we don’t get more EP time.
Originally I wanted the StarSeeker IV 102mm Mak-Cass kit. It was running $599 with no accessories. What floored me is that Orion dropped the price on the 127mm Mak & mount combo to the same $599 price. While the 127mm Mak is a better deal @ $599, I already have a 130mm scope, and I was looking for something “Lighter”… the 127mm Mak is definitely heavier. In the end I just couldn’t justify spending $599 on a 102mm Mak-Cass when the 127mm was the same price, and I couldn’t justify the 127mm since I was looking for something lighter… meh… I almost gave up…
The #1 priority was to get a small / lightweight GoTo mount, and while some folk don’t recommend the StarSeeker IV’s, I’ve never been disappointed with Orion gear or service. So the StarSeeker IV platform became the base of my search. Orion was asking $399 for the mount all by itself. While I really wanted a Mak-Cass, I was content to just get the StarSeeker mount and be done with it. then, out of nowhere I saw that the StarSeeker IV 80mm refractor kit was actually $40 bucks less than the mount itself. ?!?!?!?! that makes no sense… but I decided that since I didn’t have a refractor, this would be something I could live with. I could get the mount $40 cheaper and get a lower quality refractor to play with too. Ultimately, I then priced out the 102mm Mak-Cass under the “Apex” label, which is the same OTA but sold as a corrected spotting scope, and was able to pull the entire deal off like you see below. TWO telescopes, and the mount I wanted, for less than the original kit…
Smoke’n…
Basket:
