Rihard

11 hours ago, joe aguiar said:

Then a eq5 goto should do also cg4 could work and it be lighter but it wont be rock solid.

They do have a eq3 goto but not sure it will good for ap maybe visual 

Joejaguar 

 

Thank you! 🙂

Hi all, 

after a long 5 years hiatus, I'm craving to do some observation and astrophotography. I own an old Celestron C80ED refractor, but I don't have a suitable tripod/mount. 

This OTA should weight about 2 KG (or 72 oz).

I'm looking for a suitable GoTo mount, possibly something not too bulky and not too heavy, as I live in a tiny apartment (on the 3rd floor with no lift) and I don't have a car to carry it 😊

I would ideally use that mount also to do some AP with my mirrorless Fuji camera and some tele lenses, but I'd also love to do the same with the OTA. 

So the more portable, the better! Budget would be in the range of 400 / 600 quids.

I already looked into iOptron and these (new to me) "Explore Scientific" mounts but I'm not 100 % confident wether these are reliable / suitable products or not.  

Any recommendation would be greatly appreciated. 😊

Thanks! 🙏

Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, hero of the space race, writer and artist, first man to walk in space, has died today at the age of 85. 

May he Rest in Peace among the stars! 

Hi folks,

It's Christmas time and I have a couple of questions in regards to the Virtuoso mount and optics, especially the Mak 90 one. I hope somebody can help as Google didn't help with this pretty new item. I apologise in advance for the length of this post

1) From the pictures it looks like a table top mount. So is it a mount that needs a tripod or can it be used as a table top mount as I thought?

2) The mount looks very small, but I can't figure out how small it is by just reading the specs or looking at the pics .

- My question is: will it fit a backpack with or without the OTA? I would love something "grab & go" and something that i could easily carry on a flight. Unfortunately my 200P with Eq5 cannot be easily carried anywhere

3) I would like to do some low power imaging (i.e. very simple milky way and widefields images) with my dSLR + lens, however, the 114P is very interesting in that regards given its "fast" F/Ratio. The following questions are out of curiosity:

- Should I opt for the 114, will it focus on a dSLR or should I just forget about it and use the dSLR objective lenses for widefields, and buy the Mak 90 for planetary observation / webcam imaging? Would be cool to take advantage of the extra aperture of the little newtonian reflector although it's probably too big to fit a backpack with the mount!

- In conjunction with a barlow, can the 114P give the same power and contrast of the Mak 90 when doing simple webcam planetary imaging, or, as above, should I still opt for the Mak for basic planetary, and fast dSLR lenses for widefield imaging?

So to recap: I wish to understand how easy would that be to carry this mount on a flight, how good is the Mak 90 and if the 114P, having a greater aperture, can still beat the Mak 90 if using a barlow for planetary I think I would still buy the cute little Mak 90 since it looks pretty small and I never owned a Mak OTA before, but still willing to learn if the 114P can be considered as a valid alternative for planetary and if it would work at all with celestial objects that require fast optics / long exposures dSLR imaging.

Thanks anyone for the help and clear skies!