Third Scope - A Bit Of Advice Please!

[Guest nottsbloke]

Title says it all really!

 

I started off with a cheap Skywatcher scope and then upgraded to the Skywatcher 130.

 

That's currently on eBay as I want to upgrade to a better scope with GoTo and good enough to be used for photography eventually.

 

I know I could spend the earth on that sort of thing, but realistically £450.00 would be the top of my budget at the moment. I'm tempted by this -

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/maksutov/skywatcher-skymax-127-synscan-az-goto.html

 

What do you more knowledgeable people think please, and does anybody have any other suggestions that might be better?

 

Hope to see you all at the dark site soon when we get better weather!!!

 

Thanks,

Craig 

[dawson]

It depends what you want to do with it.

I've got that exact scope you have shown the link for. It's great but has limitations. I'd get to see it in action before you click buy.

You are welcome to come over to west bridgford sometime to have a look or i can show you at one of the meetings; maybe tonight at wymeswold, i've not decided if i'm going yet.

James

[Guest nottsbloke]

I'd love to see it in action please. Can you PM me your mobile please so I can arrange a time that's best for you.

[T A WOW]

It would be possible to do a bit of planetary photography with that scope but not really any long exposure DSO imaging. This is because it is an alt Az mount so you get image rotation when tracking an object. Also a lot of the money for that set up would go into the goto mount?

What I would Recomend, since you are not going up in aperture size would be to keep your 130p OTA and spend the money on just a mount.

Something like this http://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-mounts/skywatcher-eq3-pro-synscan-goto.html

Or if you could stretch a bit more. http://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-mounts/skywatcher-eq5-pro-synscan-goto.html

Also. Just for general visual the 130p OTA would be slightly better (IMHO) due to it being a shorter focal length. Maks are great for planetary and lunar though but not so good on DSO.

Hope this helps.

I also put this reply in the other duplicate post.

Toby.

[Brantuk]

Tobias practically took the words out of my mouth lol. Getting a good mount to start with is the right thing to do if you intend to go for long exposure photography. And the 130 is fine for visual in the meantime until you can make the move to an imaging scope.

 

But it's best to plan ahead - decide on the type of scope you will eventually get and ensure the mount you buy now will cope with future needs. All mounts have a weight limit and different levels of accuracy. For around £300 (give or take £50) you could get a good condition second hand CG5GT goto which has a lot of flexibility for different ota's.

 

Bear in mind that dso imaging is limited without a guide scope and camera as well - so your mount should be able to cope with a load of two scopes and cameras. Lot to think about there - observing is much less complex lol

 

(I've removed the duplicate thread for you )

[Guest nottsbloke]

Thanks for the advice so far. I think I need to pop along to a meeting and have a chat I think. More to this lark than it seems

[BAZ]

You could have a word with Astrocookie, (Paul) He has made a shoe string guiding rig, which isn't goto, but works first class. It's a EQ5, with RA, and DEC motors fitted. His gizmo is able to use a small guide scope to track a target star, and from the results we saw, it really works well.

 

Of course, some of the targets the dark siders want to image are too faint to be picked up manually, so that is where a goto does work, and gets to the target assuming it's been correctly aligned.

 

The Maks are great for Planetary and Lunar, but due to their long focal length, have a narrow field of view.

 

I would suggest have a chat with some of our imaging buffs, they would be able to advise better on what equipment to use. 

There is a book "Making every Photon Count" which is pretty much the intro bible for imaging, that might be of some help to you.

[Guest nottsbloke]

OK, after a lot of looking around I'm tempted by this .... http://www.firstlightoptics.com/reflectors/skywatcher-explorer-150pl-eq-3-pro-goto.html

 

I've also ordered 'Making Every Photon Count' so I might wait and read that before jumping in

[dawson]

I've had some wine, so might not make sense.

You are falling into the trap of the relative newbie; see my comments in richards "wanted" thread. You will switch between options wildly, given relatively little information.

Get to wymeswold and see what they are using. Come and see my mak 127 (when i'm sober), and make a better informed decision.

There is no rush. I will look after the money if you are worried about spending it on something impulsive.

James

[dawson]

The 150 is hardly any different from the 130 you have, and the mount won't allow good imaging, so the new link is no better really than you've already got.

James

(I know nothing about reflectors)

[Guest nottsbloke]

Hmm, I need to do a little more research & try out a few scopes otherwise I'm going to make a mistake. No need to spend my money straight away!

[dawson]

Identify what is important for you:

1. Imaging

2. Visual

3. DSOs

4. Solar system objects

5. General all rounder

1 generally needs a motorised equatorial mount, and "they" say (i don't as i don't have an equatorial mount) an heq5 or equivalent is minimum. I only have an az goto mount (i'm in the process of upgrading my legs but thats another story i can tell you in my garage sometime) but you can see the images i've achieved with my mount in my gallery. I think i could get slightly better images but i'll never get breath taking images of the dso.

Aperture is secondary. You'd get reasonable images of stuff with the scope you've got.

2. Anything will do. You don't NEED an equatorial or motorised mount. Aperture helps.

3. Wide field of views, f6 or faster. Aperture helps. Visual: any mount. Imaging: motorised equatorial heq5 or better.

4. Narrow field of views, f9 or slower. Aperture helps. Any motorised mount.

5. There is no good all rounder. For all DSOs you need fast scopes, for solar system you want slow ones. There are devices to speed up or slow down scopes but no idea how good they are.

There are people with fast scopes who do all round good stuff; there are people with slow scopes who do all round good stuff (but they can't get all the image of the larger DSOs in a single field of view).

So, it's complicated. And that's not that half of it, and i'm intoxicated.

James