DougM43

Now that is pretty cool, I presume your going to paint it?

That’s an absolutely fantastic image, 🙂

Oh no,, hopefully it’s not as bad as it looks and cleans off fairly easily when you get it apart.

Pretty sure yours is the RS version, As your description the 100r had a purple coating to the lens with the RS having a green coating and on later models light blue, also the older 100r will only accept 1.25 eyepieces. you won’t be disappointed with it, fantastic scope. just as an edit,,it seems there was some early RS models with the purple lens as they were changing from the100r to the100rs. I discovered this little nugget of info while trying to find an old post where @nightfisher did an interesting side by side comparison between the two scopes but alas I can’t find it to add a link.

That is a very nice clean picture:-)

Cheers Vlaiv, 👍👍

Right, after a nice cup of tea I think I’ve got this sorted, i have unscrewed the baader Vairilock extension and reducer from the draw tube, they have come off together which is good as it will preserve the distance from the reducer to the camera sensor when I come to use it again. the new Barlow has screwed directly onto the front of the camera, just had to remove the two knurled locking screws meant for locking in an eyepiece to allow it to screw right up. replaced the black adapter meant for holding the diagonal onto the draw tube and the baader Vip slides right in. i haven’t measured it but it looks like the Barlow element is sitting pretty much in the centre of the focus tube travel so hopefully it will come to focus ok with the camera. with the Barlow itself I have removed one of the 15mm T2 extension pieces so it now has a total length of 67mm to the sensor so effectively doubling the telescope focal length. a couple of pictures explain it better many thanks, Doug.

The baader Vip Barlow has now arrived and I thought it would be quite self explanatory as how to fit it into the imaging train but alas not,, the problem as I see it is the Barlow element ( the glass bit) is in the front 1.25” bit so I need some way to attach it to the 2” telescope draw tube,, short of sliding it into the telescopes diagonal, camera an all, I can’t see what else I can do with it, the picture shows the camera and corrector as I have it on the scope and the Barlow so you can hopefully see what the problem is. anybody got ant ideas?? I’m assuming with the Barlow I won’t be using the reducer/ corrector Doug

I have the same guidescope piggy backed onto my ed80, but I see no problem with the way you have yours set up. Doug

Superb image, you both should be very proud.

Thanks again I don’t really want to de-fork my lx90 to mount it on an eq mount, i travel up to the Orkney isles two or three times a year to visit family and take the lx with me and when the weather permits spend a bit of time with my father star gazing under some truly dark skies, the speed and ease of setting it up makes it not quite but almost grab and go. i think I will order a baader vip Barlow and go with that suggestion, I can see that working well. thanks again,, very helpful Doug.

Vlaiv, thanks again for your in-depth and very helpful answer, you have given me a lot to think about,

That’s pretty good considering how low it is at present,, you’ve got the Great Red Spot and one of the moons showing. 🙂

Wow, I feel quite humbled at some of the replies, the level of knowledge and experience given freely on this forum is quite astounding, I just hope one day I’m in a position to help other beginners move their hobby forwards. @cletrac1922 thank you for the link, I actually watched that same video along with many others regarding ZWO cameras on Saturday, after reading some of the other replies I’m going to stick with my Current camera for the next one or maybe two winters before going mono, I must admit I particularly like the idea of the ASIair, setting up an imaging rig and running it via my iPad instead of all the trailing wires to a laptop is quite appealing. @andrew s and @vlaiv I don’t pretend to fully understand your interesting discussion but it has taught me I have so much more to learn, I spent pretty much of what limited imaging time last winter getting to grips with APT and guiding with PHD so hopefully this winter can be spent actually collecting data, vlaiv you mentioned using a Barlow, one of my targets to get a reasonable image of is M51, but on my camera it is incredibly small and when I crop it to a reasonable size it definitely looses resolution, if I understand correctly using a Barlow on small targets such as this would be a good solution to a bigger better final image? @ollypenrice thank you that is just what I wanted to hear, I have seen plenty of good images with the ed80 and I have seen plenty of good images from the sxvr camera but I was thinking I’d got a roller skate on one foot and an ice skate on the other,, both great at what they do but hopeless together, you’ve put my mind at ease, those images you posted are superb panic over Mr Mainwaring. 🙂

Hi all, its taken me a while but I have just discovered the ccd compatibility tool on the forum and have checked my camera with my imaging scope (skywatcher ed80 pro and starlight express sxvr m25c and it shows it is under sampling by quite some margin (even worse if I include the .85 reducer) ive heard people say under or over sampling is no big deal but this really doesn’t look good to me. ive spent quite a bit of time this weekend inputting various cameras into the calculator and the ZWO asi 1600mm pro seems a perfect match for the ed80, but before I press the buy it button on a £1500 camera and filters I thought it wise to check if there’s any other solution to the problem or if indeed there is a problem at all. thanks in advance, Doug.

I’m no expert but Are you sure it’s a Zwo120? Doesn’t look anything like mine, looks more like an Altair camera to me

Great image, the second one with a little more subtle detail is my choice.

Ah, the old tucam pro, I still have one tucked up in the loft somewhere, great bit of kit. I think for the price they hit well above their weight with the Luna and planetary images they could produce as your image shows, I recall some people were able to modify them to take long exposure deep sky images with fairly reasonable results.

Have often thought of building my own telescope but not done so for the very same reason,, cheaper to just buy one, I’ll be following this thread with interest.