u/Intro24

I recently posted about how this scope wasn't meeting my needs (mostly a travel terrestrial and Moon, Jupiter, Saturn scope) because I never have a power supply and it can't be turned left/right if it's not powered on. Well I was googling around and imagine my surprise in finding out that it has had a battery compartment all these years. This makes it so much more usable and it feels like a brand new telescope all of a sudden. From what I've read, AA battery power can cause some strange issues but I barely care about the tracking, alignment, etc. I just want to be able to turn the scope. In the past, I have had to physically move the entire telescope in order to hone in on what I'm looking for or when manually tracking the Moon. Awesome to know I can just throw some AAs in there and make adjustments with the electric motors. I'd still prefer non-electronic knobs but the discovery of the battery compartment has made this telescope much more usable for me.

I'm in love with Questar telescopes because they:

• are extremely high quality in terms of engineering and optics
• are extremely compact all-in-one "portable observatories"
• come with carry case, accessories, and feel much more like a polished product
• have thoughtful design touches and obviously are very well designed
• are gorgeous and vintage and just awesome in every conceivable way
• have a built-in finder and the control box is an amazing idea
• don't need power and are very easy to use

The problem is that they're thousands of dollars. I drove 3.5 hours to potentially buy one that was a mere $2000 but it had issues that weren't disclosed so I didn't want to drop that much money even though it was still probably a decent deal. So I'm looking for a compact, portable, and easy to use no-fuss telescope that's ideally sub-$1000. I have near-zero interest in astrophotography or really anything aside from terrestrial viewing and Saturn/Jupiter/Moon. I just want something that looks pretty while I'm not using it and that I can throw in the car and break out on occasion for spontaneous stargazing. I want as little collimating and setup as possible in a compact and portable all-in-one package.

That said, I also love seeing the details of Jupiter so it's a tricky balance of portable and powerful. I currently have a Celestron NexStar 4SE and it's actually pretty close to what I want but I hate the computer parts of it. I never plug it in and I literally just move the whole telescope when I need to point it left or right. I don't want to go any smaller than 3.5" and I could even entertain going up to 8" like the Celestron NexStar 8SE. That one is certainly a thicc boi but it's still relatively compact. It would still have the issue that it's not really meant to be used without a power source though. I did read the subreddit guide and the only thing jumping out at me is maybe a tabletop dob but I'm not sure if that would work for what I'm wanting. Maybe a refractor?

Any thoughts on what would be philosophically closest to a Questar without costing thousands? Maybe I will just break down and buy a darn Questar one day but I have an itch and I'm wondering if there's some sort of similar tabletop.

Edit: I'm in the US with suburban light pollution but plan to potentially travel to darker skies with this telescope.

Edit 2: Here's some photos of that Questar showing some snowflake looking stuff around the edge of the primary mirror. It's a broadband coated 1970 model I think if that matters. I would appreciate if anyone could comment on how concerning those issues are. You can also see that the correct/secondary look foggy-ish too. Thoughts?