My Story
From the time I was a child, I was fascinated with the night sky and wanted a telescope. It wasn't until I was about 54 before I finally got my first telescope. My first telescope was a Celestron Nexstar 4SE and I had no idea what I was doing. I got a few images with that telescope but they were not very good. One day, I was eating lunch with my daughter and I received a phone call from a friend. Several years before, she had bought a Meade LX200 telescope and she was getting to the point where she could not use it any longer. She asked if I wanted her telescope. It did not take me long to say yes. It was an upgrade to what I had and I used it for few years. It was a large telescope with a long focal length. I wanted to take pictures of large nebulae which the LX200 was not very good with.
My next step was to buy a different mount. I bought an Ioptron CEM60 mount, which has been an awesome mount. I then bought a new telescope. My other two telescopes had been Schmidt-Cassegrain design telescopes with long focal lengths. I did some research and ended up buying a Newtonian design telescope. It is an Explore Scientific N208CF with a focal length of 812 compared to 2500 of the LX200. I still have all three telescopes and I use all of them but my Newtonian is the one I use the most.
I was setting up my telescope every time that I wanted to take pictures and taking it down every morning. I decided to buy a Nexdome observatory and the GOD's Creation Observatory was born. It has made astroimaging a lot more fun. I am thinking about getting a refractor telescope and trying it out next.