Celestron80mmf5 amiciprism

Noticing that the spotting scope that I was using did not appear to use more than 60mm or its 80mm aperture, I decided to take my venerable Celestron 80mm f/5 achromat (previously used as a guidescope) out of mothballs, use it with an erecting prism, and mount it on a simple Monfrotto 300 1BN tripod. I lose the vari-angle eyepiece adjustment and the zoom feature of the spotting scope but I gain a much wider apparent field of view, a brighter image, and a significantly smaller/lighter instrument. My Celestron OTA is from the early 1990s but 80mm f/5 doublets are still made and cost around $110. The erecting prism is roughly another $100.... so significant savings as well (provided you have a bunch of eyepieces laying around as most of us do).