gorann

Good luck!

If you test the camera at day time you need really short exposures. Daytime: fractions of a second at gain 0, Nightime: one second to focus at high gain (ca 500) and one or a few minutes when you image (gain 100 I think for that camera).

My trusted supplier in the US is OPT in San Diego (probably the biggest Astro firm in the US). I buy from all over and from whoever has things in stock and the best price - right now I am waiting for a scope on ebay from Japan. I see that OPT says you have to wait until November for an EdgeHD8 on an AVX mount, so the German options for you sound the best. Maybe it is the Chinese / US trade sanctions that mess up US deliveries from China.

Maybe you should put you location in your profile so we know where you are😉

Have you checked other firms? I had a quick look at UK companies and it seems to be out of stock (maybe Brexit has made Chinese imports to the UK slower than in the rest of Europe) Teleskop Service (TS) in Germany (a very good firm) say they will have it in stock tomorrow and seems slightly cheaper than the UK firms: https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/info/p6045_Celestron-Advanced-VX-EdgeHD-800-GoTo-Telescope---203-2000mm.html Astroshop.eu in Germany, another good supplier, actually have it in stock but they ask I higher price than TS. However, they may match the TS price if you send them an email. https://www.astroshop.eu/telescopes/celestron-schmidt-cassegrain-telescope-sc-203-2032-edgehd-800-avx-goto/p,33055

Oh, that sounds really nice and I am sure you will be happy with your new instrument! The best of luck to you and if you get into imaging that is a really good scope for it. Just have a look at Astrobin and search for EdgeHD8. We are finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I had my first covid shot today!

Good choice! The rest seems fine too except I have no idea what Starsence Autoalign is but someone else here may have a comment on that. The very best of clear skies to you!, I bet you will be excited pressing the buy button! Göran

As we know there is no single scope for everything, but the OPs mindset seems to be for a 8 - 9" SCT. He could then later get something else for more wide field work (a small refractor or why not a RASA8).

It would be small in the RASA8 but it would be there together with a few others - I will think about it (I have all the bright summer nights to think).

The reducer for the EdgeHD8 has gone down in price compared to what I once paied for it, I see that FLO sells it for 389 pounds, and it will give a perfectly flat field. The cheaper reducers may also introduce chromatic aberrationn (stars that are blue on one side and red on the other), at least that is my experience.

If you aim at astrophotography including deep space (not only planets which will be in the center of the image field) I would without doubt chose the EdgeHD8 since it has superior optics with a flat field. No brainer to me. The 9.25 is a planetary and visual instrument that lacks the extra lenses needed to give a wider flat field. The 9.25 will catch 33% more photons, which is not much, and then you can catch those by just exposing 33% longer with the EdgeHD and have nicely shaped stars all over the image. Also the 8" scope weighs 3 kg less, so easier to handle for the mount. EDIT: The longer focal length of the 9.25 makes it even less useful for deep space.

It does say 11.35 h on p 5 of that pdf. Too small for my RASAs but otherwise I am sure they would have captured the stream.

First Vlaiv, I got a bit irritated when you try to talk a beginner into buying a Newton for AP rather than a refractor, but that Maksutow Newtonian from TS you suggest looks like something that could be very rewarding for a beginner. A nice amount of aperture, no coma corrector needed and no sensor distance to worry about - just a bit of collimation. Sounds like a good choice, and it is not on back order right now.

My guess is that 8" reflectors are rather popular because they can be carried by budget mounts like SW NEQ6 and similar. Bigger relectors demand more expensive mounts. Still, most 8" refelctors (except things like RASA8) have rather long focal lengths (usually 1500 - 2000 mm) and are therefore really not beginner scopes since they demand good off-axis guiding, good seeing, and good collimation. The usual recommendation is to start imaging with a 3 - 5" refractor, which is much more forgiving and can be guided with a guide scope and should not demand collimation. They can rapidly give quite rewarding results.

I think my thought was to also collect Ha but clouds moved and I probably got other priorities......

I have done quite a bit mono for Lum, and it has been the main idea behind my double Esprit rig. Here is my first light (half a year ago) with my new ASI6200MM (230 x 2 min gain 100) sitting on my Esprit 150. The RGB data come from my Esprit 100 with an ASI071MC (58 x 5 min gain 200) sitting next to it on a Mesu 200. That setup gives very similar FOVs for each camera. Works quite well for my standards at least. What is it? It is NGC 6914, aka The Running Man in Cygnus, a blue reflection nebula surrounded by a vast area of H-alpha nebulosity. About 6,000 light-years away.

Yes, I never understood why those things needed to plug the holes in the plate have to be so expensive. And after you dropped one on the ground it tends to make an irritating rattling sound. A pier is much tidier.

Thanks Alan! Yes, when processing this data it soon became clear to me that the Ghost did not come alone to the party but brought many small nasty friends with him, some still hiding in the dust😉

Thanks Olly!😆

Thanks a lot!

If I did some cropping I found that I could also add data that I had from October on LDN1171 to the image I recently posted, which put the Iris in the center. I do like the broader FOV. And, @ollypenrice, I made sure not to loose the reddish structures around the central star in the Iris. So it is now from LDN1171 (to the left) to NGC7023 and Sh2-136 for those who like proper designations😉 The story behind the image is the same: The loss of astro darkness have made me dig a bit deeper in the data I collected this season and try to be creative by mixing data. I discovered that I had a RASA image from August 2020 of these objects to which I could add more RASA data of the Iris from October 2020 and also 5 hours of refractor data of the Ghost and surrounding creatures from 2018. The refractor data was added to about 50%, mainly as lum. RASA data collected 13-24 August and 21-22 October 2020 using a RASA 8 and ASI2600MC (gain 100). 320 x 2 min. Refractor data collected 15-16 Spetember 2018 using an Esprit 150 and ASI071MC (gain 200). 60 x 5 min. So totally about 15 hours put together in PI and processed in PS and PI.

That back lit illumination and colourful dust are something that just appear when I process my RASA images and I did not use to get anything like it with my Esprits. I also see it in other peoples images taken with RASAs, for example this one: https://www.astrobin.com/421114/ I wonder if it related to the low focal ratio somehow. Also the new low-noise CMOS could play a role. That combination allows more stretch before the noise becomes apparent. During the initial stretches the dust looks more like the dark nebulosity I was used to see in my refractor data. So it may not have much to do with processing skills.

Yes, at least the mono version should beat the colour one on NB, unless there is something seriously wrong with physics....

I will experimet a bit with this when astro darkness returns. I also have both the colour and mono versions of the IMX571 (in my case ASI2600MC and QHY268M) but the colour version is so very very good that I may also end up wondering why I got the mono. Remains to be found out😉

Agree with Peter😉