Astro-Physics 130EDT StarFire f/8 apochromatic refractor.

This review says it all: "My, oh my! What a scope ... This scope has perfect optics. No spherical aberration, no false color ... The OTA is beautifully-made, almost a work of art. The focuser is incredibly smooth. Looking through one, it is easy to see why Astro-Physics refractors are the scopes by which all others are judged". What more can I say? This is the best telescope i've ever seen, let alone owned. Mounted on the Astro-Physics 1200GTO in my observatory.

SkyWatcher 80ED f/7.5 apochromatic refractor.

I have two SkyWatcher 80EDs. They have rather basic build quality, but the optics are very good, with a flat, well corrected field of view, and overall offer brilliant value for money. One is observatory mounted with a TeleVue reducer/flattener to work at f/6.4 and has the focuser modified to use Robofocus, while the second has a Moonlight two-speed focuser and is used as a portable refractor on my HEQ5 for solar work with a 60mm H-alpha filter and also for night-time observing.

SkyWatcher 305mm f/5 dobsonian reflector.

My `light bucket' for visual work. Luggable rather than strictly portable, but has huge aperture, good optics and a bargain price. No electronics whatsoever, so i'm finally having to learn my way around the sky.

Astro-Physics 1200GTO CP3.

A superbly built and well thought out mount. 140lb capacity with less than an arcsecond of periodic error once error correction is turned on. There are few mounts that are better than this. This is a replacement for my (eventually) excellent Losmandy G11/Gemini. As is customary, I'm keeping notes on it, but there's not much to say. It's just perfect.

Skywatcher HEQ5 Pro.

Mount for the SkyWatcher 80ED and PST. Build is acceptable rather than great and I replaced the rather flimsy standard tripod with a much better wooden one from Berlebach, but it's quick to setup for visual use and the performance is fine for my needs. Impressive for the price, although quality control is somewhat lacking. I'm also keeping some notes on my experience.

• (coming soon)QHY8: Colour 3032x2016 (6-megapixel) large-format CCD. Basic, but sensitive and low-noise.

• QHY6: Monochrome 752x582 CCD. Used as an autoguider.

• DMK 21AU04.AS: Monochrome 640x480 @ 60fps Solar/Lunar/Planetary imaging CCD.

You can read the lengthy story of my search for the perfect eyepiece collection here (last updated November 2008).

• AstroArt v4.0 - used for some image calibration and processing. Very good package, especially with SP1, but I'm using CCDSoft for camera control these days.

• CCDSoft v5 - for imaging and autoguiding. Excellent.

• PEMPro v2 - Great piece of software for analyzing and tuning the performance of the 1200GTO and HEQ5. Version 2 has added very useful polar alignment and backlash adjustment tools.

• Photoshop CS3 for the Apple Mac - I used Photoshop 7 for a long time, but that had patchy 16-bit support and I finally upgraded when PS7 was broken by OS X 10.5 and Adobe had no plans to fix it again. Used with Noel Carboni's Astronomy Tools Photoshop Actions and Russell Crowman's Gradient Xterminator.

• PoleAlignMax - Superb piece of freeware that uses CCDSoft and TheSky to get accurate polar alignment very quickly and easily.

• Registax - stacks images from a WebCam, and works miracles.

• TheSky 6 Professional Edition - used to control the 1200GTO in my observatory.

Ignoring the large library of dusty Astrophysics books left over from my undergraduate and postgraduate days, I find these books invaluable.

• Burnham's Celestial Handbook. This three-volume work is rather dated now, but it is an Astronomy classic. Readable for enjoyment as much as a reference work.

• Deep Sky Companions: The Messier Objects. O'Meara's book is the best guide i've found to the Messier catalogue.

• Deep Sky Companions: The Caldwell Objects. Another book my O'Meara, covering Sir Patrick Moore's "Caldwell catalogue" of 109 notable deep sky objects not found in the Messier catalogue.

• Deep Sky Companions: Hidden Treasures. A third book by O'Meara, covering a further 109 deep-sky objects not found in the Messier or Caldwell catalogues.

• Rukl's Atlas of the Moon (revised edition). Excellent lunar atlas.

The list of kit I once owned and have now sold has grown rather lengthy, and now has its own page.

Somehow the quest for equipment never seems to be over. Here's what I'm thinking about at the moment. Short term there's...

• 2" IDAS light pollution and Baader 7nm Hydrogen-Alpha filters for the QHY8.

• A second Moonlight focuser for the observatory 80ED, this time with built-in motorized focuser.

Longer term there's also...

• A TMB 80/480 refractor to replace the observatory 80ED

• Baader 2" Herschel Wedge Solar Prism. Expensive, but would give fine white-light views of the Sun once sunspot activity picks up after the current solar minimum.

• QHY9 CCD. The 8.6 megapixel (3358x2536) CCD would be a great narrowband imaging setup.

And in the "just dreaming" category..."

• Replace my Skywatcher HEQ5 with something a bit better; maybe another Losmandy G11, or maybe a Takahashi EM200.

• SBIG STL6063E CCD. Huge field of view and extremely sensitive. I'd love one of these, but will never be able to afford it.

• Astro-Physics 160EDF refractor. I'm on the list, but sometime around 2023 at the current rate.