I currently own a Skywatcher 150 mm f/8 achromat refractor. It is one of those recent inexpensive imports from China (specifically, the Synta optics factory). It is mounted on a Vixen GP-DX with the aluminum tripod, with two drive motors and the Vixen SkySensor 2000-PC goto computer (ver. 2.06). This combination is not designed for such a heavy load as a 6-inch refractor, but with careful weight balancing it manages.

Here is a view of the telescope, set up for solar observing. The white paper shields the back-end components from the heat of direct sunlight.

Improvements I've made to the telescope and mounting include:

• Obsessive attention to elimination of scattered light.
• Regreasing and realignment of the GP-DX mount head. Taking apart the mount head is not for the faint-hearted!
• Replacement of the stock focuser with a very fine 2” Burgess focuser with microfocus. Here is a closeup of the microfocus mechanism.
• Placement of sorbothane anti-vibration pads under each tripod leg.

Other equipment:

• An AstroVid StellaCam II video camera. This is a Watec 120N CCD video camera with some extra electronics. The CCD chip is a Sony ICX418ALL with 768×494 pixels at 8.4×9.8 microns. I use a frame grabber PCMCIA card from ImperX to transfer images from the camera to a laptop hard drive.
• A 2” Herschel wedge (plus additional neutral density filters) for high-resolution white-light solar observing.
• Storage of the telescope in a TOW anti-tank missile case (a perfect fit!), which I obtained from a Canadian surplus supply company.
• A beautiful set of Vixen Lanthanum superwide eyepieces (40 mm, 22 mm, 13 mm, 8 mm, 5 mm, 3.5 mm).
• A 2” TeleVue 4× Powermate.
• A 2” TeleVue 2× barlow.
• A large battery (21 Ah) to power everything in the field. It has a handy onboard 12VDC to 110VAC converter.