I haven't posted in a while. I've been in Massachusetts for about two months and the weather has been unstable. When mild it's been gray. When clear it's been frigid or the moon has been out.
Meanwhile I'm in the market for a cheap short focus refractor to ride piggyback on the C8 to take wide field deep sky images. Short focus refractors come in a variety of sizes and and prices but I was looking to go cheap skate without too much compromise.
As luck would have it, while watching a YouTube review of the Celestron Nexguide auto-guider the reviewer mentioned his satisfaction with using a piggyback mounted 70x400 mm Celestron Travelscope as a guide scope. At less than $100 I figured the scope was worth investigating. Celestron also offers a piggyback mount that mates to several of its scope models.
One Travel Scope Amazon review included some pretty decent astroimages taken through the scope by the reviewer. Suddenly I was seeing this scope as a credible candidate for a wide field imager. I probably should have bought the scope right after Black Friday when it was as low as $65 from at least one online vendor. Demand for the scope as a Christmas gift caused the price to soar to $90 - $100 going into Christmas until settling to a low of $75 today. I've been holding out hoping a vendor will blink to a lower price but will get one by Spring.
