Cosmic Geoff

My experience of Celestron SCTs and Maksutovs is that they work well optically and if the mount develops a minor problem I can fix it myself. Spares seem to be available for bigger problems, should anything occur. No reason to switch brands so far. Thousands of happy owners can't be wrong. As for Meade, never used one, less familiar, confusing model identifying scheme, rumours of mechanical problems.

Primarily for visual use? The Celestron C8SE is a popular setup, and a good visual instrument, and portable (one can pick up the whole assembly and carry it through a standard doorway) However as a C8 SE owner, let me disillusion you of the notion that it is any good for imaging. Using it for planetary imaging is a pain and for deep space imaging, even worse. If you intend any sort of imaging, get a C8 tube assembly and mount it on the heavy-duty GoTo mount of your choice. The CPC800 version works very well for planetary imaging, but a German equatorial GoTo would be a more flexible choice. Attempting deep-space imaging with a scope of 2 metre focal length is by most accounts not for beginners, regardless of what the manufacturer may imply. As for the LX90, I know nothing, but take a critical look at the mount and tripod.

The wedge seems to be getting the thumbs-down here. As an engineer, I can appreciate that using a wedge could add more stress to a consumer-grade mount. Perhaps the best answer is to mount it as an alt-az but design the setup/pier so that a wedge can be added later if desired. The wedge for the OU LX200 telescope is a fixed one, apparently welded up from angle iron.

An equatorial mount (wedge) will get any images in the correct RA/Dec orientation, which may be a consideration for your purpose. I took an image of the 'africano' comet with an alt-az mount and it is skewed by about 45 deg which made the image harder to interpret.

Africano captured EVA style with 102mm f5 Startravel achromat, ASI224MC on SLT mount. Field is angled around 45 deg to lat/long. Comet near bottom of frame next to TYC2285-216-1 19 Sept around 22.30 BST

I was thinking of the deepsky imaging with long exposures option. IIRC the eyepiece height of the OU instrument is suited to standing observers - a bit high for a child. The wedge is triangular (a fixed welded sub-frame) and I don't think removing it would make the instrument significantly lower.

Future proofing. I have seen the 16" LX200 Meade at the Open University observatory, and that sits on a wedge.

They don't do the same thing. Starsense does star alignment automatically. GPS avoids the faff of entering time and date every time (and lat/long if you ever change location) A lot of newbies struggle to enter these parameters in the correct format. Once the GPS has loaded its data, all you have to do is sync the telescope with one or two objects. I have never felt that transferring the Starsense to the GPS-equipped scope was worth the bother. If you figure out how to control your telescope remotely from a laptop, tablet or smartphone, you may find you can access the latter device's GPS and avoid buying a dedicated dongle. Celestron offer a GPS dongle for around £150 but I don't have one of these. My GPS is built into that mount.

I have three Nexstars - it is an easy GoTo system to use, particularly as an alt-az. The Starsense does work and saves time and effort when setting up. Poor sky conditions (twilight rather than light cloud) can stop it working. However I have found that GPS (cheaper) is also a significant time and bother saver. For portable power, use any battery system you like other than the internal primary cells. There have been extensive postings here on the subject of telescope power. If you don't have any eyepieces, get a 15mm and 8 or 10mm eyepiece in addition to the 25mm Plossl that comes with it. It probably comes with a decent prism diagonal as supplied with the 8" SCTs. The red-dot finder is adequate as you only need it for setup.

I have collimated one SCT and checked the collimation on another. My non-expert opinion is that the video does not show any need for collimation and you should leave well alone. Just check that you have not made things worse by twisting the Fastar around.

We need a bit more information to give you an useful answer. Portable - is that 'backpack for 10 miles' or 'lift out of 4x4 truck'? Good for deep sky viewing - as a rule of thumb this means an aperture of at least 8 inches - but I'm guessing this is a dark skies area so with a smaller aperture you will still see something. reflector vs refractor (or catatroptic) your choice, but see previous answer. easy to use - depends what you mean - a Dobsonian is easy to learn to use, but not so easy to find anything with. A GoTo system is not so easy to figure out how to operate, plus you need power for the duration of your trip, but easy to find 1000's of objects once you have figured out how to set it up and align it. And what is your budget?

As it happens this looks very similar to a large Ross telescope that I own. I can supply one or two pictures of it on request. Mine is in immaculate condition asides from not having the original leather covering (I also have the original leather which is in poor condition). I don't have the original mount. The seller informed me that it originally came via Charles Frank of Glasgow as an astronomical telescope with an equatorial mount and tripod, which I saw but was unable to purchase. These large Ross appear very occasionally on ebay and I have seen a photograph of a complete one sold as a spotting scope with wooden tripod. The normal method of attaching the tube may be via a conical sleeve rather than bolts fixed in the tube. There is no sign of any attachments on mine. It looks like you have a big job on your hands to repair that main tube. To encourage you, the optical performance of mine is probably as good as any 70mm scope you can buy today. If you get it restored it will not be worth a fortune, more like a few hundred pounds.

I am not convinced by the notion of having one scope that does everytning. A C11 or C14 would be very nice for visual observing, and for planetary imaging. But for deep-space imaging it would only be suitable for imaging small objects. Unless you use the Hyperstar. I think you need two telescopes, one for visual & planetary, and another for deep space imaging. Others may come along and advise you further. I would also suggest that if you want to grab a scope and go outside for half an hour, a C14 is the last thing you want. If you buy a used C11 you could sell it in the future with little loss. I recently bought a used CPC800 + accessories which looked as good as new and represented a massive saving over the new price. The potential saving would enable you to buy an imaging refractor and a grab'n go outfit.

Thanks for the tips..

The SLT is a useful GoTo mount. The tripod is on the wobbly side but if you want it light and portable... The scope will be something like my 102mm Startravel f5, which is a handy widefield scope. I put the Startravel on the SLT mount and found it capable of surprisingly useful tasks with a camera attached (admittedly on a wooden tripod rather than the alloy one). I have had both for several years.

I have been plate solving some starfield images with All Sky Plate Solver and found that the solve time was measured in minutes. I presume that it shouldn't take that long and that the elderly PC is to blame. (Intel Core 2, 6320, 1.86GHz x2, 2GB memory). Can anyone suggest a PC spec that will reduce the solve time to seconds? It seems time for an upgrade anyway, and I was thinking of getting a used business PC as they are available cheaply from re-sellers. I'm typing this on another one that cost under £100.

I have imaged both with a 8" SCT. If you get more than a round and not over-exposed disc of the right colour, you are doing well. Imaging Neptune's moon Triton was more interesting.

It's really a personal choice bearing in mind your budget. Maybe read up more on the various types of telescope. For instance, small refractors range from inexpensive long-focus achromats for general use and inexpensive short-focus achromats intended for wide-field viewing, to expensive ED and apochromatic small telescopes designed for astrophotography. Collimating a Newtonian telescope may be challenging if you have never handled anything more tech-y than a smartphone - it's not hard if you are used to tinkering with things. Be aware that entry-level telescopes have entry-level mounts - generally lightweight and a bit wobbly. But if you want it portable... You don't have to buy the scope and mount together. But a decent non-wobbly mount could consume most or even all of your budget.

The C8 OTA is very good for planetary imaging but doing any planetary imaging with the SE mount is a struggle, and the SE is hopeless for any other sort of imaging. For serious imaging you need a different mount, or a different outfit altogether. The C8 SE is intended to be a portable visual outfit only. Synscan is a Sky-watcher brand. Celestron features the Nexstar GoTo which is easy to use.

Some experiments with EVAA have shown me that with a 4" refractor and a camera I can 'see' faint galaxies in the suburban, reportedly Bortle 6 skies here just as well as with a 8" SCT. It even challenges what I saw with the SCT at a dark skies Devon site. From here I generally can't see M110, a companion of M31, but the EVAA image shows it clearly. Something to think about before you buy a big, bulky scope.

Impressive work. I am intrigued by the difference between my shot of M31 with ASI224MC and 102mm f5 achro and the image above. I have a little nucleus in the middle of a 0.5 deg wide frame that ought to be nearly all galaxy, and the satellite galaxies which I imaged separately are out of frame.

An update: I tried Pluto again on the evening of the 5th Sept, with a bigger stack. This image overlaps the previous one, the previous position being out of shot to the left. Pluto's position on the 5th is marked halfway down on the left, next to a 13th mag star. The brightest star in the image is TYC 6310-466-1. I struggled with the platesolve yesterday but today compared the image with the earlier image and got it the right way round. 19 frame 114sec stack taken with ASI224MC camera and 102mm f5 achro refractor.

I don't think the professional astronomers feel guilty about using the professional equivalent of GoTo. 😁

I have wondered about this myself - my Dell laptop went low a couple of nights ago and I had to take it indoors for a recharge. I'd rather use a 12v to 240vAC converter and the standard charger and not mess with the Dell charger control system, but 60 watts or so (+losses) is going to be demanding of any battery. One can feel the waste heat coming out of the laptop. Perhaps a laptop with long battery endurance would be a smarter option for field use. An option I have used is a very long mains extension lead. 🙁

I upgraded from a 127mm Mak to a Celestron Nexstar C8 SE so I'm biased. 🙂 The C8 Evolution is the same OTA on a better mount.