radiofm74

Definitely. I'd kill for that zipDob. Trouble is, they all seem to be fairly small-brew builders and they're across the pond… But if anyone comes across an European builder of ultra-fasts I'd be interested to know!

I just discovered a kind of critter that I did not know existed and might be relevant to this thread… ultra-fast dobs! For instance Mel Bartels' "Zip Dob". It might be of purely academic interest to most of us, but gosh ain't that a thing of beauty… https://bbastrodesigns.com/ZipDob/ZipDob.html

Just a quick word on this. For me, there was. Never been able to get good results with the HEQ5 process, so much so that I just rough polar aligned with the scope, then drift aligned. The AsiAir got me to a level of accuracy that, with guiding, required no additional steps. Similar on paper, very different on the field 😂

I'll just add to what Grumpius posted that AsiAir only works with their cameras and with a good number of DSLRs listed on their site. I agree that there are limitations, including this one, but in an hobby that's already as complicated as astro-imaging, plug'n'play is a nice thing. I've wasted enough hours of exposure to badly made polar alignment apps, and spent enough hours drift aligning my rigs for absolute precision, to appreciate the use of a well-made polar alignment app 😁 Besides, and to another question that Martyn asked: I also do "non GoTo" astrophotography with my super-light and much-loved Vixen Advanced Polaris mount, but then you do it all by hand: polar alignment, finding your object, framing and – on multi-night projects – trying to frame the exact same way… you miss plate-solving and all that it brings; it's doable, but another level of difficulty, especially if you have a small chip, and especially if you go for objects that are not easy to locate in the sky. From your garden, and with a C6, I'd say that GoTo is another sine qua non. Clear skies!

Yes, the reducer introduces the back focus requirement (requirement is perhaps too strong a word… wrong back focus will degrade performance at the edges). Using a Bahtinov mask is easy, don’t worry about that As for PCs and suchlike: an AsiAir might be a good idea. Some love ‘em some hate ‘em. One thing that is sure is that they make acquisition much easier. The polar alignment routine is easy and pretty accurate, plate solving instantaneous, guiding is also much simplified…. You can do all this on a traditional PC and there’s value in learning it the “traditional” way, but AsiAir makes it all much easier. Anyhoo, let’s not get ahead of ourselves … snatch that mount and reducer first. They’ll be great accessories also just for observing at ease in your garden!

Thank you for your kind words. If you start imaging you'll start pixel-peeping and you'll find a myriad little problems with those shots ;D;D;D;D Backfocus is pretty easy. You need to get spacers enough to put 105mm between the optical surface of the reducer and the plane of the sensor of whatever camera you're going to use. If memory serves, Celestron's own adapter for the SCT thread provides 55mm. The rest might very well be provided by your T-ring. The problem with C6 and OAG is that your image circle is small as it is, so the OAG might not be getting any sky to show to your guide camera, or a very small portion. I agree on the EAF. A Bahtinov mask for a few quids is what you actually need ;D But you do need the reducer, and some form of guiding imho.

Hi there! I have an HEQ5 Pro and have tried to take some shots with my C6, although that is not my main imaging scope. Some thoughts 1. An HEQ5 Pro is a good platform for imaging, it will hold your C6 without a problem, and it's also fun to use for visual. 2. An HEQ5 Pro is not a top-notch EQ mount and for decent accuracy you will need guiding from the get go, especially at those focal lengths, or your exposure time will be severely limited and you'll have a lot of throwaways. So you need to consider the added expense of a small guide camera (a used ZWO 120 mini might be your best bet) and a small guidescope or off-axis guider (OAG). An OAG is considered the standard with SCTs, because a small guide scope might have insufficient focal length + may suffer from differential flexure. With all that, I'd still suggest that you get one of those mini-guidescopes because an OAG is more difficult to operate and it may prove especially challenging to find a guide star with a C6. (I am about to go into tests about this so… but first experiences were that a guide scope is easier). 3. The 6.3 reducer is a sine qua non. Do not even consider shooting at f/10 with 1500mm focal length. It's going to be challenging enough at 945mm focal length and f/6.3! No need to stress that a small ED refractor would make your entry in the imaging world a lot easier… think about it because getting a used small ED doublet is not going to cost you a lot, especially not if you consider the whole package you have to buy (mount, main camera, guide camera, guide scope, ……) Just to give you an idea: these are a couple shots I took one summer with the C6 just for kicks. I'm not terribly proud of them, but they give you an idea of what can be achieved with a C6 on and HEQ5, with a ZWO mini guide scope and ZWO ASI120 mini, a stock Canon 60D and a UHC filter, using an old PC and free software + elaboration in Photoshop. I was not very experienced when I took these but I have no more recent results as I've focused more on using my ED refractors. Good luck!

Well, they do count provided your car is some distance from your flat. The order of business is “what can you walk 10’ to your car, load, set-up and then go back without undue effort”. In this vein the pic of a 14” dob into a small (and I’ll bet pretty heavy) suitcase is very relevant to me…. It might lead to unwise expenses

Oh gosh… the 14" went complete in that small black suitcase? You're giving me ideas! Set-up / tear-down time?

I do not want to stoke a fire, but my very lightweight Vixen Advanced Polaris and APZ can hold a C8 without trouble. Not cheap, at the limit, yes, and you'll have some shake at high power while focusing if you're on the EQ configuration, but overall a very good, very portable 8" rig. (I prefer EQ because once you have focused, tracking will be steady and smooth…). Of course a C6 is even more portable and goes even easier on my Vixen AP, and still has goodly aperture… This is my airline-portable setup.

Until now we've seen some large rigs being yomped around, but there seems to be a little fluctuation as to the distance involved. OP said "5-7 min walk with my kit" to a car, or to the actual observing spot. We might add "in one trip" as additional condition. Might seem lazy, but after a day's work a second trip might be a significant hindrance… I stick by my 8" but am curious to hear from people moving larger mirrors…

Well, per Cambridge and Oxford dictionaries, in British usage it's the reverse and the innocent one is the usual meaning. Phrasal context – with "biggest setup" being the object – should also help, despite the legendary enthusiasm of amateur astronomers for their gear 😅

My routine is, I think, pretty exemplary of the kind of "humping astro gear" discussed here. On good nights, I'll take my kit down from my flat to to my car-sharing parking some 10 minutes away from home, and from there drive to my site ≈ 30' away. On super-good nights, I'll drive back home from the parking and bring down a second kit from the apartment for imaging. The largest I carry – and it's not difficult – is a 8" f/4 Vixen R200SS, known to be a very light newtonian, on my Advanced Polaris mount. I just plain love this setup and it has given my best DSO observing ever. On "two kits nights", which have become rare, I'll also carry a refractor, a second mount and imaging kit. I'm just wondering if in my nomadic life I could stretch things to something like a 12" flex tube dob, so I'll be watching this space intently ;D This is the R200SS on the alt-az, not its mount usually but gives you an idea…

Hi Jim, welcome to the forum and congratulations on your new telescope! I think that the key is to take the problems one at a time. A refractor like yours is the easiest optical tube to use, so this takes out of the equation issues such as collimation etc… so far so good! Preliminary: you know that already but NEVER POINT YOUR TELESCOPE AT (OR NEAR) THE SUN. It's extremely hazardous and serious injury may result from looking through lenses at our day star. With that out of the way… Item #1 for you is to understand how an EQ mount works and must be set up. I had the CG-4 and it's a very nice equatorial mount. Look up the internet on how to use it. A 5-min video will do the trick (the channel "Small Optics" is good for tips to beginners). As a passionate user of EQ mounts, here's my advice: In setting up you need to polar align your scope, i.e. align its "right ascension axis" to the North. Imagers may lose their sleep over a slight misalignment. For observing, it's enough that you point the N leg of your tripod roughly towards Polaris, and adjust the altitude knob to the latitude of your location. To check if you've pointed it right, do this: your mount probably does not have a polar scope, but if you remove the caps on both ends, there'll be a hole to peep through. Just check that if you peep through you see Polaris. Once you're polar aligned, your telescope will move along the celestial coordinates: right ascension (east-west) and declination (north-south). And once you've acquired a target, you'll be able to "track it" (keep it in your field of view) just by rotating the right ascension knob. That's the big advantage of an EQ mount. Nota bene: for your eq mount to be smooth in its movements, you need to take care that the scope if well balanced on both axes. All you have to do is put the scope on the mount (with the counterweights already on!), loosen the RA knob, place the shaft horizontally, and move your counterweights up or down the shaft until your telescope stands still. Once you've done that, you bring the shaft back down to resting position (shaft and counterweight pointing to ground), loosen the Declination knob, and check that your scope stands still once parallel to the ground. Make sure that, while doing these things, your telescope is in "working configuration": finder on, eyepiece in, caps removed. All of the above is much easier done than described! It will take you all of 5 minutes (maybe 10 for your first time). Once you've done that, check the alignment of the finder, and leave your scope (capped and ideally out of direct sunlight) out to cool while evening approaches. Item #2 is to decide what to look for. My best advice is to buy a book called Turn Left at Orion. Meanwhile there are good apps such as Sky Safari that can help you make a list and finding objects. Make a list with just a few easy objects, ideally all close to each other, based on your local conditions. You may want to give us more details on where you'll observe from (city or countryside? Unrestricted view in all directions or e.g. big building to the South?). Meanwhile, I can offer you a small "starter list" for tonight: - Start from some beautiful double stars that are visible to the naked eye: Porrima in Virgo, Cor Carol in Canes Venatici, and splendid but more challenging Izar in Bootes. Mizar in Ursa Major is also available and beautiful. They're not all close together and it will be a little gym for your EQ mount skills, but as they're naked eye visible, it will be essentially "point and shoot". - If you want to look for a deep sky object, go for for Messier 13 (the great hercules cluster), which should be up high for you, is relatively easy to find, and looks wonderful (even in light polluted skies). If you find it, and enjoy it, and want more challenges, go look for two other splendid globular clusters M3 and M5. (Galaxies may prove too difficult just yet). For tips on how to find and observe the Messier objects, consult this wonderful guide: https://tony-flanders.com/urbansuburban-messier-project/ - Still up, and still up for a challenge? Go look for the Double Double (Epsilon Lyrae) and the Ring Nebula, both in Lyra. There are two things that typically confuse beginners while looking for objects in the sky: (a) the orientation of your finder scope and of the view in your eyepiece are not the same… take that into account! (b) cardinal directions change depending on where you're looking (e.g. if you look with your naked eye to the North, N is down, S up, E right, W left; if you look East E down, W up, S right, N left, etc…), on the image orientation of your (finder)scope, and also on how your diagonal is rotated. It's very confusing so if, while looking into your finder or eyepiece, you don't know where's West, just nudge your scope a little along the RA axis and you'll see movement East-West. That, and a map of the stars you're looking at, will help you understand just where you are and how cardinal points are oriented in your view. Go slow! If you manage to see two, three objects with satisfaction it will have been a great first night!

My guess, educated by the information provided on this thread by Franklin, is that it's a 1999-2001 telescope. I feel privileged to have it, and consider myself its keeper: a great scope! The only weak link in the setup is the tripod. But as said, before I swap it, I think I'll try vibration suppression…

The ED102S set-up you've already seen on here (sorry), now complete with half-pier and all-Vixen accessories (down to the green box!) save for a nice Baader diagonal with helical focuser. The half pier makes viewing much more comfortable, but amplifies the vibration of the rather flimsy tripod a little. Before looking for wooden legs – which might be a good solution – I'll try simple vibration suppressor pads. But emphasis is on comfortable viewing: I was very happy to be able to observe at zenith without lying on the ground yesterday night ;D

Dream set-up!!!!

I was sadly unable to observe the Aurora as – incredibly for such a passionate amateur astronomer as myself – I was unaware at the moment it happened, and when I realised I was under Bortle 9 skies. I'm very sad that I missed the event, but your video and your incredible pictures is the closest I could have to being under that spectacular sky. Thanks a lot! PS: as you guess, I've now set up every kind of clock and alarm imaginable should such an event repeat itself… it's my understanding that until 2025 it's a good idea to keep an eye out!

You might even get away with a (used) C6. I paid mine 400€, and it's a full 6" of visual goodness in a tiny package. Well below your 10kg fully setup. My precious little visual travel scope … Add in a f/6.3 reducer and you get almost 2 degrees of FoV in a 1.25" eyepiece.

I've had two beautiful nights of stargazing around new moon: galaxies in Ursa, Canes, Coma. Seeing was not great so I mostly used the 24, the 19 (just a little closer, just right for low power…) and the 9. I loved the views, but I did miss the 13 – on most objects, it was the magnification that conditions called for. Very happy with how the set came out, and both Pans and Naglers have completely conquered me!

Finally! The 13 mm arrived and here's the family, all together. Impatient to try it out!

Hi! Nice picture of Bode's Pair! Yes, more integration on the Whirlpool could be a good plan. As for the Whale galaxy: it will be small, and you will certainly have to crop some, but it's an attractive duo with the Fishhook galaxy nearby. I am a little confused by what you say about the NA Nebula. It's too low NOW, but unless I've completely mistaken your location it will be high and proud in your night sky during mid- to late summer: very much at Zenith, actually. Ditto for the Veil Nebulae. Narrowband is everything but a waste of time on a DSLR. By "Narrowband" I mean nothing more sophisticated than sticking a UHC filter in front of your sensor. Here are a couple shots I got with a stock Canon 60D and an Astronomik UHC EOS-clip, using a Vixen SD81S. Post-processing in Photoshop. Quite a lot of integration time on each target – that is key. I am not a particularly experienced imager and that was my first summer so I was even less experienced then than I am now. Lagoon Eagle Trifid (using a milder UHC-E filter in order not to kill the reflection nebula) Western Veil (back to UHC)

Hello! The season transition may be slower than you're assuming ;D Galaxy season is still in its full and if you have not tried these targets yet, the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) is perhaps the best spring galaxy to image with a short-ish focal length,. and there are plenty more wonderful galaxies that transit near zenith if you're at 52 degrees N (Whirlpool, Whale and Stick…). All of these targets are wonderfully placed right now for you, and will still be once the lunar cycle is back to astrophotography-friendly at the end of May. If your NW horizon is not terribly light-polluted, you might even start from Bode's Pair right now and save the galaxies I mentioned before for late May/early June. The globular clusters M13 and M92 might be your logical next targets for June. Wonderful M5 too, although lower South for you. M13 is certainly a target I want to revisit this year. In July, it's Nebula season (and plenty of open clusters too, if they're your thing…). With 400mm of focal length, I'd stay away from planetary nebulae (save perhaps the Dumbbell in August and the Helix in September). The Lagoon and Trifid are, each, wonderful subjects of their own and true narrowband classics (… though the Trifid is in part reflection and a bit trickier). A little more to the North, culminating around 25° above the horizon for you, are two equally beautiful targets: the Swan Nebula and the Eagle Nebula. Whether they're feasible for you will entirely depend on what your Southern Horizon is. If AT ALL feasible, I'd try all of them. Being narrowband targets, they can be shot with more light pollution or moonglow than galaxies or clusters. As John suggested, already in July, and even more so in August and September, Cygnus, Cepheus and neighbouring constellations offer a wealth of wonderful objects for short focal lengths: - All the components of the Cygnus Loop (at the very least two absolute classics: Western and Eastern Veil) - The North America Nebula and especially its "Cygnus Wall" section - As said the Dumbbell Nebula - Not narrowband but stunning: the Fireworks Galaxy in Cepheus (mayhap you can catch also the nearby cluster in a single frame?). Note that the Iris is a reflection nebula: still broadband, and possibly trickier, but of course worth it. - Certainly trickier from what I'm told (have not tried it myself yet): the Elephant Trunk in Cepheus I have the impression that you have much to keep you occupied this coming Summer, and perhaps the next 😃

Yes, I'll be in Tuscany and given good weather and no Moon, it's pretty nice and dark.

Here's for the happy (almost) ending. My new set, nearly complete! One piece is missing: the Nagler 13 was not sent to my dealer and is expected in July (grrrrrrrr…). As my "astro-month" IS July, I might seek another one on the market and find a mutually satisfying solution with the dealer… The Pan 35 and Pan 19 were not in the plans originally. They showed up used at a very good price and I pounced. I'm glad that I did! As I pay the customary weather penance, I've only had occasions to use the Pan 35, the Pan 19 and the Nagler 9. They're wonderful, and I've taken a particular liking to the 19… such an easy eyepiece, such crisp and beautiful views, such a good focal length especially with my 102/920 and 81/625 refractors! There's an undeniable overlap with the 24mm, but for my f/9 Vixen and F/10 SCTs the 19mm is the "golden" focal length or very close, giving an exit pupil of 2mm, so it might well take its place, where possible with the 35mm Pan for widest field. But I stray… very happy to have them all here. Thanks everyone for the good advice!