Nelson Posted June 13, 2016 Share Posted June 13, 2016 As I am saving my pennies in order to upgrade my setup I am doing the wrong thing, in that I am looking at other scopes, if only I had the money now I would purchase my original choice of scope, that being a Celestron Edge 8" on an AVX mount. But I've not got enough money yet, so in the meantime I look at other scopes and the latest is the Meade LS 8". They are similar in cost but as I want to do both imaging and visual I really need someone in the know to tell me which would suit my purpose best. When I have spent the initial money on a Celestron I then need to buy the Celestron Starsense to help me align quicker and better, that is another £250 on top of the initial £1575 for the scope and mount. Once I get a bee under my bonnet I just can't let it go. A small part of me says buying any new scope is crazy because we don't get many clear skies and unless I go to a dark site my views are rubbish, due to the close proximity of a street light. Any thoughts anyone!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xanthic Posted June 13, 2016 Share Posted June 13, 2016 My first question would be - what are you looking to image?. That'll have a lot of bearing on the scope you should buy. If you are imaging, it's more than likely you'll have a laptop/camera with which you could use astrotortilla or ansvr to do your syncs with the stars and save the £250 on the Starsense. Is your street light an old sodium one or has it been changed to LED? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nelson Posted June 13, 2016 Author Share Posted June 13, 2016 Hi, the street light is the old sodium one, although the council painted the back of the lamp, which made it better, there's plenty of light pollution still. I would like to image Planets and Nebulae. I have a Canon 600d camera and Stellaruim on my laptop but I haven't looked at the two you mentioned, how will they help with polar alignment? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xanthic Posted June 13, 2016 Share Posted June 13, 2016 Just had a quick read about the mount you mentioned. The polar alignment feature is called All-Star Polar Alignment - http://www.celestron.com/university/astroimaging/all-star-polar-alignment. The StarSense unit is for use with the handset and provides the mount with knowledge of it's pointing position, which really ought to be called syncing not alignment. If you are imaging nebulae, you'll ideally want to look into guiding too, to allow the longest duration exposures. If you want to image planets, DSLRs are not ideal, the sensor is way too big and the video lossy. You'd really want to use something like a ZWO asi120mc or QHY5l-ii but webcams are also good starting points. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nelson Posted June 14, 2016 Author Share Posted June 14, 2016 Hi Leigh thanks for your replies. Sorry it has taken so long to reply to you but me battery died and takes a few hours to charge up, so I had to do it over night. Anyway, I have just read the Celestron article regarding all-star alignment and it seems to be just the ticket. I wish there was someone around Leicester who has one of the Celestron Edge HD scopes so I could see things in action. I don't want to contact an outlet as I am not in a position to purchase yet so it might seem to them I am wasting their time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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