OK Apricot

Hey all hope everyone is doing well. Decided to make a bit of a progress thread about what I'm going to call The Astro Podium. Easter weekend the Mrs and I decided to do something about the garden. It was a terrible state when we moved in; grass over a foot long, trees and weeds everywhere, horrible flower bed with B&M special picket fence pieces etc. We made a good effort of clearing up and peeling it back to something somewhat more presentable, cutting the grass, trimming and de-weeding, and re-doing the flower bed. There's no reason that my hobby can't be done from my home, so we had a little brainstorm about how we could transform the garden somewhat. Firstly there were 20ft+ conifers and trees at the back fence blocking the view to the east sout east. Secondly there's a street lamp right above the garden. It's going to take some persuading the council to do something about it, maybe shielding. Let's face it, they can't take the "security" stance seeing as my van was broken into, all tools gone, when it was parked right underneath it. Even so, we decided it'll be worth it even if nothing comes from it, as I believe you can still shoot good images from badly light polluted areas. Anyway, I went primal on the trees and stumps with an axe and bow saw leaving a nice view to the east south east. Next is the issue of having line of sight to the NCP. Having mocked up a rough area, it'll have to sit a few feet higher than patio level and a little more central. This is where the podium will come in. With a scope set up where we want the podium, I'll have around 180° of a sky to scan, though the lowest I'll be able to really see is around 20°+. Over the past week I've been chipping away at the original flower bed to find a line and level to work from. Tonight I finished the initial rough line where a retaining wall will be placed. The idea is the podium will be 2.4m in a square, levelled and set back into the slope of the garden, sitting around 1.2m proud above the patio. Either side of that will be a smaller retaining wall to the outline of the garden. Not sure if I'm coming across well here, but I have a vision and will work with it. Nothing but good old fashioned elbow grease and a bit of guess work 😅. This should make for a great summer project, target to be completed by birthday in October. The extra calorie burn will help me find those last 20lbs to complete my weight loss goal as well, having gone from 224lbs to 188lbs in the last year. Anyways thanks for taking a look and feel free to offer some advice to a complete novice - I'm a lift engineer not a DIY gardener!

For me the 200P is edging the Skymax 127. It just feels more grab and go - I literally just move it to where I'm observing, pop in an eyepiece and I'm away. It does depend on conditions though - murky or poor transparency I'll take the Mak to hit some double stars and brighter DSOs, the moon too if it is out.I had both set up the other night and never even touched the Mak. I was out to catch the sun set and try to lay eyes on mercury and the 200P gave me a very respectable view of an approx 45% cresent. That was special for me as I'd never seen Mercury through a telescope before, and it was only a week ago is managed to see it for the first time with naked eyes. The Mak sat there idly all night. I have a feeling that later in the year the Mak will start to muscle in past the 200P to set sights on the solar system 😎

🙄 Of course...

Seems like it's coming down to preference of sensor size. Processing will obviously be the more significant learning curve, however I'm sure with video tutorials I'll get my head round it. I believe I'll need an adaptor of sorts to thread the camera onto the scope?

Rest assured, my 200P mirror looks terrible if I shine a light down there. The only thing I've cleaned is my Skymax 127 meniscus, but that was particularly bad. The saying goes "look through your optics, not at your optics". The sombrero may be visible B5/6 with an 8" dob, I know it is from Bortle 4. Start by finding the constellation Corvus. It sits underneath the bowl of Virgo. You should be able to make out Algorab at the top of Corvus. What I then do is find the star HD110317J, a couple degrees north of Algorab. Under B4 skies this is faintly visible naked eye so I point my finder at it, under B5/6 I'm not sure if it's visible naked eye, but a little scanning and patience with the finder should do the trick. From there I nudge a little in the direction of Porrima and I'm looking for a formation of 3 stars close together - these are a useful pointer for the Sombrero! I should mention I start with a lower powered eyepiece for the widest field of view. A dob oriented view should show the 3 stars to the left of your image, and the fuzzy sombrero should be visible towards centre. Patience and practice is all it takes, but trust me it is worth it - seeing that bulging core and dust lane with your own eyes is incredible! With my 200P, I find a 20mm EP at 60x gives the best view. Star hopping is a bit of a skill, but I only bought my 200P 3 months back and soon got the hang of it. Use Stellarium or similar to find the bright stars or objects of significance near, or on your way to, your target.

Might go old fashioned with a Bahtinov mask to start with for focusing, though no doubt I'll end up with autofocus. Good point on being able to crop afterwards, I hadn't thought of that, would be losing data though. I feel the 4/3 ratio looks more natural. With regards to amp glow, am I going to notice much of a difference? Hopefully they do the same this year - I'll be looking to make the camera purchase around July/August. Mount early June, Camera early August, accessories early September 🙂

Things 'just working' would be ideal for sure. I wasn't clear, but I don't have a DSLR. My route to imaging would be to buy either a DSLR or an astro camera. Following advice I decided on the latter. Maybe it doesn't count, but when out observing I can't help but try to get pictures on my phone, so I feel very ready for the challenge - I've wanted to do this since I was young!

I will have a reducer/flattener by the time I purchase the camera 👍

Good evening all, With a 30th birthday gift on the way in the form of a few grand, I'm having no trouble spending it mocking up shopping carts on FLO! I think I'm pretty much settled on the mount, so my attention turns to the camera. Following much of the advice on a previous post of mine, I'm ditching the idea of a DSLR and going straight for a dedicated astro cam. I feel like I understand a few of the basics; lights darks flats, exposure time, gain, binning, filters etc, but still trying to learn and get my head around image scale, sampling, pixel size and the like. With that in mind, there must be a camera quite well matched for use with the 80ED. A member on here did some looking for me a little while back and suggested the ASI294MC Pro would be a good fit. Looking into this a little, it seems its pretty much the same as the 533, just the sensor size is 4/3 and 1/1 respectively? I don't really 'like' square images, but can get over myself if this camera would be a good match. I'd like to shoot in colour, though down the line I'm sure I'll try out mono. I was out with my local club a few nights ago and was very impressed with the ASIAir someone was using. Add to that the issues that another member was experiencing using a laptop, it's a nice thought to have this, though that would somewhat restrict me to ZWO cameras? I do have a laptop which would be more than enough to run any capturing, guiding or alignment software. I'd like to spend in the region of £1,300 for a camera and any necessary accessories. I suppose it's also worth mentioning I'm a complete novice and this will be my first venture into the hobby. Thanks for reading 👍

I was out with a few guys from local group and we saw this, it was pretty spooky, not a sound!

There's such a pioneering vibe about this thing. These tasters are just incredible! I read that their contrast is actually diffraction limited, exceeding even the highest expectations. It really feels now like it is out there ready to cast eyes to the edge of the actual observable universe. What are we going to discover 😳

I used to have an Evostar 150 achro. It was very good on the moon and planets, but there was noticeable CA at higher mags and on brighter objects. As said, you could buy a semi apo filter which will help, depends if you can "see through" the CA. It wasn't a deal breaker for me and enjoyed it very much. A Mak or CC would be another good shout.

Going to need a mount to put it on! Lovely looking scope though and the idea of that quality through a binoviewer of equal quality gives me butterflies 😳

Typically your maximum magnification is twice your aperture, so 171x puts you just above, however these quality refractors do eat it up.

That would pretty much fit the bill as far as I know - I'm sure someone will be along soon to elaborate. I recently purchased one of these but haven't had the chance to get first light yet. The size and weight make it very portable indeed.

Great little fabrication! I may be doing something similar with my (also) smallish garden 👍

I honestly would go for the Mak 127 between the two. In your case, you're not far from dark skies and you suggest you're quite happy travelling to them. As said already, it's very very good on the moon and planets (but not in my experience as haven't seen them myself with this yet!), however it will still perform very respectably on fainter deep sky objects, more so than the 80ED would. I drive to Bortle 4 skies and on a night of excellent transparency and seeing, I caught the spiral structure of M51 with the Skymax 127. I've had great views of M81, M82, M13, M57 to name a few. Out of the two, the 80ED will be best for open clusters, but you can still enjoy a rich field through the Mak - just about fit the double cluster in. I recommend this scope a lot in these types of threads 😅 - it really is good!

I appreciate what you're saying. I'd love a C9.25 EdgeHD - supposed to be excellent on galaxies and planets. Ideally I'm after a mount as a first purchase - I'll be less limited to certain OTAs if I know I have a mount with a, say 15kg+ payload capacity. I want to buy once as I'm only going to have this sort of 'windfall' once! At the same time I also want to get enough kit to get me going. Mount - camera - OTA? Mount - OTA - Camera?

Dew shield out? Might have mistaken you, but measured the OTA to be approx 590mm from front of dew shield to fully racked in focuser. HTH?

I'll measure it for you when I get home from work, unless someone else comes in first.

My thanks isn't enough for that reply. Thank you so much @The Lazy Astronomer for an excellent piece of advice - I'll come back to this when the time comes and do some planning in the mean time!

Get in! I didn't have to pick this up myself either 😅. So excited about this purchase - my first step toward astrophotography. What a quality piece of kit 😁.

I'd considered it to a point, but nothing more serious than a few videos here and there - deepskydude on YouTube has a few star party videos with NV which does look amazing in itself - but feels to me like it'd lose its appeal after a few nights out, so not worth dropping thousands on. If I had a 20" dob and clear Bortle 1 skies however...

Great suggestions all. Me and the Mrs were having a go at the garden yesterday tidying things up and we've got a few plans actually, some general landscaping etc and after a small discussion we might even pave an area half way up the garden that I can start using for astro from home. Thoae obstructions? The trees I was on about? Yeah they'll be down soon, so that helps with the obstruction problem, a paved area opens up sight to the north for PA as I will be able to see over our roof, just have to deal with the street light. Tempting to open her up and pull a fuse or two 🤫 For the time being I'm more than happy lugging out whatever kit I need to - it is what it is. I guess when I said "portable" I more meant that it will not be a permanent kit. Obviously the imaging nights at first will be those all night long forecasts where I can relax into it without putting any pressure on myself over clouds etc, but I currently head out with the Mak and 200P even for a couple hours clear sky. I purchased an Evostar 80ED over the weekend and very excited as it's my first high quality refractor. I guess this kind of focuses the route to go down in terms of camera, reducers filters etc. I've read good things about the ASI294MC Pro - seems to be a good fit for this scope?

@ONIKKINEN absolutely spot on with my approach to observing - everything goes in the van every time; the 200P, the Mak and all the bits and bobs. I don't think I'd struggle with what's essentially a bit more weight and an extra trip to the van and back. @fwm891 Will definitely pay attention to Olly - comes across most knowledgeable. I won't commit to either until I've got a good picture of either side of the fence. A good idea about a lower spec camera to start. I was looking at a FOV calculator to just eye things up for that very reason - to start cheaply to get familiar with the process as a whole.