Cr 173
Use your telescope rigs to see how this object appears.
Telescope setups ranked by optical compatibility with this target.
Portable Travel Rig
Grab-and-go refractor for casual observing and travel. The Evostar 72ED and the Twilight Nano together weigh less than a folding chair, and the mount is a simple alt-azimuth — up and down, left and right, no alignment. Set it on the ground, drop the tube on, and you are looking at something inside a minute. The Panoptic 24mm gives just under 4° of true field; add the 35mm when you want the widest view the little scope can produce.
5 components
Widefield Nebula Imaging
Wide-field deep-sky imaging built around big emission nebulae. The SQA55's fast, flat field covers the whole ASI2600MC sensor, and the 7nm dual-band filter cuts the sky glow that otherwise buries Ha and OIII from a suburban backyard.
7 components
Star Cluster Sweeper
Ultra-wide-field setup for large star clusters and sweeping the Milky Way. The 80ED and the Panoptic 35mm give just under 4° of true field — wide enough to hold the Double Cluster, the Pleiades and long stretches of the summer Milky Way whole, at a 4.7mm exit pupil that stays comfortable under a dark sky. The Twilight I is a manual alt-azimuth on a steel tripod, which is exactly what sweeping wants: you push the scope along the star clouds and stop when something catches your eye.
5 components
Binocular First Light
A 10x50 apochromat binocular is the most-used optic in most experienced observers' collections, and almost nobody buys it first. It shows the Pleiades whole, the Andromeda galaxy as a real ellipse, dozens of open clusters, the craters along the lunar terminator and the Milky Way as a river of stars. There is nothing to assemble, so it goes outside on nights a telescope will not.
1 component