Portable stargazing setup

Besides liking to photograph the nights sky i sometimes just want to watch it directly through my telescope. This because getting the setup ready for photography takes a lot of time and care.

The setup i use is highly portable because of it's low weight and bulk. It consists out of a Vixen Porta mount and a Stellarvue SVR 80ED Raptor telescope with a Stellarvue diagonal and red-dot finder. The used eyepieces are Vixen NLV 20, 15 and 10mm.

The Vixen Porta mount came with my first telescope set i ever bought. The telescope it came with was crap but the mount is very nicely made. It is an altazimuth design meaning that for tracking objects you need to adjust both axis of movement. It's perfect for lighter telescopes heavier ones will cause to much vibrations and flex in the legs.

The Stellarvue SVR 80ED Raptor is a refractor type telescope meaning that it uses lenses in stead of mirrors for gathering light. It is also an apochromat with a doublet type lens. What that means is that it uses a lens that consists out of two glued together lenses. This ensures that the different frequencies of light will all come together in focus. They will refract to the same point ensuring that the color will be true. The lens has a diameter of 80mm and is housed in a carbon tube making it light and very usable.