The 8ft
dome used to house a Meade 12" LX200 telescope which was imported from the
US. To the telescope a number of accessories have been added which
I would recommend. The telescope was sat on a Telescope
House pier and wedge. Between the wedge
and the pier there is a tray to hold my eyepieces.
If you plan to do any photography or CCD work then you will need counterweights to balance the telescope. These slide along on the underside of the telescope.
On the top I use the supplied Meade finder to locate objects and there is a Telrad mounted on the other side.
The LX200 hand controller is splendid for controlling the telescope and I have found that once the scope is aligned, it easily locates any object in its database. You can also focus the telescope from the handset as well. My focuser is a JMI NGF-S with and controlled from the house using a RoboFocus.
To ensure that the optics are kept free of dew, wrapped around the corrector is a heating system from Kendrick and one of their flexible dew caps. One of the advantages of using a flexible dew cap is that it closes around the tube using velcro. Therefore you can adjust the width at the bottom to get around the counterweight bar.
Then
I upgraded to a Meade 14" OTA on an Astro-Physics 1200 mount.
Unfortunately I decided to sell the Meade 14" because the
width of the dome apeture meant that I had to rotate the dome
about every 20 mins or so and since I observe from inside the
house that defeated the objective of keeping warm.
You will need steps to reach the eyepiece at certain altitude. My steps came from Argos and are white, have three rubber steps and a handle at the top, all for under £20.
Click here to find out about the equipment and software that I am using.