The tool of my stargazing is a Lotus 114-EQ. It´s basically a Newtonian reflector teleskope with an aperature of 114 mm or 4,5”, a focal length of 900 mm (somewhere in the whereabouts of 35,4”), which is nothing fancy but I do manage. I had never heard of the manufacturer (Lotus) but it seems to be quite good regarding quality. The equatorial mounting is very stable. The eyepieces I use are two kellners (25 mm and 12,5 mm) and a Plössl (5 mm) and they give the magnifications of 36x, 72x and 180x. I´m missing something in the range of 110-150x , so I´ll propably get a 6,something eyepiece to make a smoother range of magnifications. I just got the telescope a couple of days before X-mas so haven´t really got to do any observing yet. I have previously used a pair of binoculars (7x30). I plan to guide myself in the sky  using PHILIP´S Star Chart, Planisphere and Moon map, so we´ll just have to wait a while to see how well they work. I also plan to use Redshift 3, an interresting computer program, to locate my targets for the nigths to come..

More to come .....