"Alan Buttivant" wrote in message
...
Thanks all for your advice. I guessed that a rich field refractor was a
scope that did not have the power of some other refractors and was perhaps
smaller/lighter.

I bid for a tal 100R on ebay and did not win the bid. A few days later I
saw
one for sale in a shop locally and was surprised by the size of it. Given
its weight and size I wondered how I would have got it into the garden.

I need something smaller/lighter but with sufficient power to keep my
interest going and not too expensive.

Any suggestions (direct to me if you prefer) would be appreciated.


Regards

I have an ORION.. but that is me....

Before you go shopping, search the groups and the net for reviews of ones
you are interested in, then go to the shop... nothing beats that hands on
approach. The Mount is just as important as the tube, a shaking tripod is
just going to make you frustrated and it will spend more time in the closet
than in the garden. With that in mind, it is alos going to be the heaviest
part of the scope.

In the time you take researching and shopping, learn all you can about the
mounts, the different optics and how to use them. I know this helped with
me...

If you want something you can just pick up and go out into the garden and
scan the sky, think about a Dobson mount. I got one for a friend, and he
gets alot more sky time than I do, becasuse he can just drag it out of the
closet and plop himself down in chair and enjoy.... I have to level and
align my mount, get the tube on, check the tracking, let the optics cool....
then I get to play...

Come to think of it... maybe I should get a dobson...

The Plus's of a refractor is that you can also use it for land
observation... I am a journalist and I take mine out and used it during the
big fires here in California, I mounted my Nikon on it and got some great
shots... all in relative safety...

When I worked for a surfing magazine.. (LOOOONG time ago) we did the same
thing,