I have two main tools. Firstly a large 300mm (11 inch) telescope with a modern digital planetary camera attached. 

Secondly I have a smart telescope which good at taking deep sky images and is very portable.

Large telescopes are very susceptible to temperatures, the optical lenses bend light differently when they are too warm. So I need to assemble the telescope mid afternoon of the observing night and cover it up and wait till it cools down. A second reason is that warm telescope can suffer from condensation which can mist up the lens. Many a night I've seen skies cloud over after spending the afternoon and early evening setting up! Such is the life for an Astronomer in the UK today.

In order to prevent misting, on the telescope lens, I have a large dew shield and heater band which keeps the lens area slightly warm and mist free for the whole night. It also shelters the lens from stray light or moonlight to some degree.

Alongside the telescope there is a huge range of stuff we need, eyepieces, filters, adapters, Barlows, power supplies, cables and don't forget cameras!

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I also use Meteoblue as a forecasting tool for night skies as the are usually accurate and have a special page for Astronomy seeing.

 https://www.meteoblue.com/en/weather/outdoorsports/seeing/hereford_united-kingdom_2647074

I have upgraded my Telescope with a new Celestron C11 SCT (Schmidt-Cassegrain  tube) 

 which is bigger (and heavier!) than my last scope by 50%. I'm hoping this will allow better and more detailed images. So far I've had a few good nights to sort out its alignment and perfect setup. Just need good more few nights with excellent seeing conditions. Look in the Latest Images section for updates. I also have added an electronic focuser to help with fine focus. The latest images of Jupiter showed some fine blue wisps of cloud that I've not seen before.

The telescope I have used (up to late 2025) is a 200mm SCT (Schmidt-Cassegrain  tube) telescope and a tracking equatorial mount (and tripod). The Telescope tube was second hand about 10 years ago and does a good job. 

The telescope sits on a Celestron Advanced GT tracking mount. Its big and heavy, the telescope is a sensitive and has an expensive set of mirrors that are easily knocked out of alignment or even damaged. 

The mount can then find an object for you, once set up properly and calibrated. This makes observing much simpler. Finding dark objects like galaxies in the sky can be a challenge, you still need to know your way around the sky.

The Dwarf II is much smaller, quicker and easier to set up, it’s about the size of a lunch box. You can leave it till the last minute to decide to set it up so the weather can be the final deciding factor. A simple camera tripod and the Dwarf II sets itself up by automatically calibrating to the sky it can see. You can enter in the object you want and it will rotate to the object. You can then use the inbuilt cameras to take pictures.