Cosmic Geoff

Or did you mean do we have experience of Optcorp? They don't disclose their location. That's enough reason not to buy from them.  They appear to be based in the USA, so you should add international shipping, taxes and duties to the price they quote. I'd advise you to buy in Belgium or the EU.

14 hours ago, Wavseeker said:

Well I went to a stargazing club today and I am quite puzzled again. A Schmidt cassegrain is suddenly interesting again since its very portable and I can do astrophotography with it. And I found a celestron 8SE on sale at optcorp. Anyone here has some experience with them? 

Quite a few people on this forum have a C8 or C8SE, and Celestron have been making them in some form or other for over 40 years. What in particular did you want to know?

The C8 SE package is a good visual scope and quite portable (you can pick up the whole assembly and carry it outside.)  You can do planetary astrophotography with it, though the exercise would be much less trying with a proper imaging mount like that bundled with the CPC800, or a German equatorial.  As for deep-space astrophotography, it's useless unless you are going to re-mount the OTA on a heavy duty German equatorial mount.

We already had a thread about this.

Short answer: yes & yes.

Astroboot have several telescope mirrors for sale -  not the size you were looking for (but they do have 75mm, 112mm and 130mm).

Lots of Chinese parabolic mirrors on alibaba.com

What's this about? If it's for one off, try Astroboot who sell Sky-watcher sub-assemblies from time to time. If you need volume, you could try component suppliers in China.

I struggled to see much detail on the planets with visual observation.  For me the answer was to try planetary imaging.  Almost the first time I tried imaging Jupiter with my 127mm Mak, I secured an image that clearly showed the Great Red Spot, and much more detail than I had ever seen visually. 

Ref. the last two posts, EEVA (as we call it on Stargazers Lounge) has considerable potential for extending the power of telescopes, but those who have actually tried attaching a camera and getting an image on a screen will have a keener appreciation of the various difficulties involved. 

7 hours ago, fiestazetecmk2 said:

If non goto Dobsonions are (as you stated unusable) then why are they so popular with first time buyers and experienced astronamers. .????. 

I didn't say non-GoTo Dobsonians are unusable. I said that I found a non-GoTo Newtonian almost unusable. 

I suspect that first time buyers are attracted by the low pricing of Dobsonians (and they have yet to try finding objects with one.)

As for the experienced astronomers, different folks are looking for different things from the hobby. Some like to keep it simple, some enjoy star-hopping, and some people just don't get on with a box of electronics, and I entirely respect that. 

Professional astronomers use instruments with GoTo (or its professional equivalents), and some of them don't even look through a telescope.

7 hours ago, DarkNorth said:

Does anyone know the aFoV for the default 10mm / 25mm eye pieces or at least the TFoV so I can work it out? It may not matter much - it's more for accuracy on stellarium. I'm going to buy a couple smaller eye pieces for now going by whats been recommended in other forum posts - to give me an idea and go from there

Assume 50 degrees FOV for those eyepieces - that will be close enough for the purpose.

The type of telescope is a personal choice.  Don't rush into buying your 'dream scope' or 'lifetime scope' - start with something small and easy to use, so if your interests are modified by experience, you have not sunk all your money into the wrong kit.

Quite a few people like Dobsonians, but at least check out the advantages of GoTo mounts.  They can make it far easier to find objects, and save large amounts of observing time, particularly valuable if you discover that you want to be looking at objects rather than searching for them. Personally, I found a non-GoTo 203mm Newtonian almost unusable.

I assume you bought an 8" Dob - you don't exactly say.

The only view you really need is to the South.  Objects low in the North will come to a more observable position if you wait long enough.

Neptune is easy to see and resolve with an 8" scope. The hard part is finding it without a GoTo mount as it will look stellar at low magnifications.

You won't see Pluto - it's too faint and the only way you will detect it is to take some photographs at intervals and see which of the numerous star-like objects in the image has moved. Not easy.

What to view? There are various online guides of what to see in August. Or buy the August issue of a popular astronomy magazine.

1 hour ago, dc240969 said:

Weight, cost and location isnt an issue, lm just looking for something that doesnt move if l breathe on it

That could be an unwise admission.🙂  You have various options for upgrading the mount originally supplied with the 127mm Mak, but mostly they involve spending large amounts of money.  The Mak should have a standard dovetail meaning you can fit it on a whole range of mounts.  Retaining the mount head and exchanging the tripod unfortunately is not simple as you will have to make up an engineered adaptor.

The first choice is whether you want to retain the Alt-az format or change to an equatorial mount.  If your interest is solely in visual and planetary imaging it would be wise to stick to alt az.  OTOH if you plan to get into deep-space imaging, then get a heavy duty equatorial mount. 

In alt-az, you could get a slight improvement with the Star Discovery mount. Or look at mounts by ioptron. Or the  Skywatcher AZ-EQ5  or AZ-EQ6 which give you the equatorial option as well.

In equatorial, you could look at the Skywatcher EQ3-2, EQ5 Synscan, HEQ5, etc.

I have actually used an AZ-4 mount and an EQ-5 mount with my 127mm Mak and both were vastly more stable than the original SLT mount & tripod.

1 hour ago, Plumb71 said:

To everyone who has replied thanks for you input. Although i am still clueless about which one to get, they both tick boxes for me, i am interested in both planetary and deep space. Would a 150p with a more powerfull eyepiece suffice or a 150pl with a less powerfull eyepiece do the same as the 150p

FYI a long focus Newtonian is considered to be somewhat more suitable for planetary use as it has a smaller central obstruction. The longer focal ratio will also make the choice of eyepiece type less critical.  On the other hand, for deep space use the maximum field of view available will be less.  Either f5 or f8 will attain any desired magnification with suitable eyepieces.  f8 Newtonians are now rare as they rapidly become impractical in larger sizes.

If you are really worried about storage space, a 6" Schmidt-Cassegrain will give you long focal length in a short tube - at a substantial extra cost.

A C8 should perform a lot better than that.  It could be the awful seeing.  Is that a single frame, or the result of processing?

Not blowing my own trumpet or anything, but if you search back in this section you should find one of my images of Jupiter with a single frame and the (much better) stacked result.  I typically stack 20% of a 5000 frame video, processed in Registax6.  I generally focus on a star, not on the planet. 

  On a decent night, the live view should look a bit better than the original post image above, and the major division of the rings should show in the processed result.

If you save the file as a .ser you don't have to debayer it.

I hope this helps.

10 minutes ago, Wavseeker said:

if i want the deepest view for my money, should i go with a pushto or even without a pushto system and navigate with a starmap?

That's a personal choice. And if you had experience of using one of the systems you'd know if it was what you wanted or not.  Some people like relying on a star-map, others consider this an annoying and frustrating waste of valuable observing time.

3 hours ago, Wavseeker said:

But I can track objects so astrophotography is an option

You should get expert advice about that. I'd say that the OTA is not first choice for astrophotography (except maybe planetary astrophotography), and a mount designed with visual use in mind may turn out to be horrid when used for imaging.  Like the Celestron SE mount - fine for visual use,  useless or a pain for imaging.  Serious imagers use German equatorial mounts - big, heavy and expensive ones.

I usually advise beginners to start with a small scope of good quality, rather than trying to buy their ultimate scope. That way, if matters turn out different from what you expected, (e.g you can't get on with GoTo at all) or your interests turn to a different area of astronomy, you have not spent too much money and you were intending to upgrade the first instrument anyway...

If you haven't pressed the order button yet, I would suggest that since this will be your first scope, and in view of your medical condition, you not try to buy a 'keeper' or 'lifetime' scope but buy a smallish good quality scope that will let you get your bearings with amateur observing, and get an upgrade later in the light of experience.

I don't now own the scope with which I re-started amateur astronomy, though I do still own and use the 127mm Mak I bought second.

It does not matter critically what you buy as a starter. A Newtonian or Mak of 127 aperture or more will let you do some observing of planets and deep sky objects, and keep you entertained for a long time.  Note that Goto (if you desire it) will cope with a restricted sky, so long as you can see two bright stars suitable as alignment objects.  If you accurately align the tripod you can manage with one alignment star (or planet) and once aligned you can try the 'precise goto' re-alignment with most systems.

1 hour ago, Andrew Harding said:

How would the C8 SCT cope with DSOs, especially galaxies? It looks to have quite a high focal power of 10 (not that I am that familiar with what this means, but from my basic understanding, the lower the number, the better it is for viewing fainter objects, such as galaxies

I actually use my C8 SE SCT for taking to a dark skies area to view galaxies. It serves well for this.  Few galaxies are large enough to fill the field of view, and even fewer have a part that fills the FOV when viewed visually.  The f10 focal ratio is not material - in practice one uses a magnification that best brings out the galaxy from the background - I have used up to x133.

If you want an 8" scope for visual use that is a lot easier to manage than an 8" Dob, you will have great trouble finding anything more suited than the C8 SE.

I firmly advise that you forget about using the same scope for visual and for astrophotography.  The requirements both for scope and mount are so different as to render this impractical. (Before you ask, the C8 on the SE mount is unusable for deep-space astrophotography and a pain to use for planetary astrophotography, the latter requiring an entirely different technique.  The C8 OTA can be used for astrophotography, but then we're back to looking at bulky, heavy and expensive mounts.)

11 hours ago, Swoop1 said:

My Newt doesn't give good magnification for imaging (or as good as I would want). Looking at some recent images from the Lunar and Planetary imaging boards, the more close up lunar is what I would like to emulate.

Tell us what exactly you used, and how you processed the images, and we can advise further.

If the video eyepiece is not computer compatible, you could just get a no-brand USB astro video camera.  I have seen some on ebay that were cheaper than the suggested adapters.

It's really a personal choice.  I have seen all sorts of scopes (asides from short focus achromats) recommended for planetary viewing.

The Mak and SCT offerings only overlap in the 5" to 8" sizes.  Maks have long focal ratios and smaller central obstructions.  SCTs have less extreme focal ratios (f10), are lighter size for size and perhaps more suited to doubling as a general purpose scope.

Do you have planetary imaging aspirations? If so, sooner or later you will become fed up with struggling with a flimsy visual mount and aspire to something solid, powered and expensive.

I have been impressed by the rigidity of the heavy-duty tripod that came with my CPC800. I don't think that a pier would deliver any marked increase in rigidity for visual use.

The obvious advantage of a pier is that you don't have to erect it for each session. Or polar align it, if that is applicable.  Disadvantage - large one-off effort to dig foundation and install it.

The advantage of a tripod is that you can move it.  And if a change of OTA requires a significantly different support, you can change the tripod.

I might have mis-remembered what I read about the Sky-watcher, but read this thread on the topic of mirror size in 180mm Maks:

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/90651-orion-180mm-mak-cass/

A heads-up on the nominal aperture of these scopes - I read somewhere that the earlier ones (gold?) had an effective aperture smaller than the claimed 180mm, but the later ones (black?) have a larger mirror and so are close to the claimed aperture. 

A key variable is the number of teeth on the RA wormwheel (inside the mount).  The number of teeth will determine whether a given motor kit will drive at the right rate.

In theory, a given motor kit will drive any mount that has the matching number of teeth on its wormwheel, if attached to the slow motion shaft.