Kunwar

1 hour ago, StarryEyed said:

You'll probably need to jump up a class or two of mount to keep that 140 pointing in the same place for any length of time given its longer focal length and image scale. But that's not to say you couldn't try. Which is the only true way of knowing. 

I've quite a basic setup as I don't use autoguider, only scope, mount, focal reducer and a dslr. I take only 60 sec subs but take lots of them. So the setup is not so heavy and I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible for now, so I might give it a try on HEQ5 first then move up in gear when the need arises. Fingers crossed.

1 hour ago, newbie alert said:

The apm 140 would indeed  be a superb tool for dso

Which model is it?

Its a great scope also more compact than I expected. It's she one with the 2.5 inch focuser and 989mm FL.

hi all

I have two scopes both f/7 ED doublets - an APM 140mm and a 102mm Altair Astro. I mount them on a HEQ5 pro mount and a Berlebach Uni 28 tripod. I also have a Canon 600D DSLR and a focal reducer for the 102mm scope. I have so far tried astrophotography with the 102mm scope- Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, the Moon and DSOs. 

I initially bought the 140mm scope for visual only but have been recently curious if there is any benefit in using the larger scope for photography or should I stick with the 4 inch? I know the larger scope would be better for lunar and planetary photography and I intend to use it for that, so the question is directed more towards DSOs, especially galaxies. So far I have enjoyed taking pics of galaxies and wonder if there is any benefit in using the larger scope for this (before I go investing hard earned cash in my setup eg a focal reducer for the 140mm and a larger mount). Or is the juice not worth the squeeze here?

Any advice appreciated!

Hi all

I recently bought an APM 140mm doublet and now looking to source a focal reducer for it for astrophotography. The recommended reducer by APM is the Riccardi Reducer but it's very dear, nearly €500.

I'm wondering if there is such a thing as a "universal" reducer which I can use, that would be more economical? 

I'm reading on this topic and it seems focal reducers are very specific to the brand and model of a scope. I don't fully follow the science of it all so this is a shot in the dark if anyone can provide advice.

On 02/01/2022 at 06:52, Waldemar said:

A chain is a strong as its weakest link... So everything depends on the quality of your scope.
Your scope sits in the top quality range I believe, so to get the best out of it, you should use top quality accessories as well.

TV PowerMates and Baader BBHS diagonals will get the best out your scope, and you will see the difference. Maybe you can borrow them from a nearby fellow astronomer or a club in the neighborhood to get a taste. I would lent you mines, if you were closer...
The PowerMate as well as the BBHS just seem to disappear and that is what you want...

Just my 2 €cents 

Thanks @Waldemarit's a good idea to test before buying but difficult for me to find someone locally.  I'll definitely prioritise the diagonal first.

19 hours ago, KP82 said:

The Powermate is a telecentric lens and works in a different way than a traditional barlow to achieve the same result. When used with short focal length eyepieces for high mag views, I believe it is indistinguishable from a quality 3-lens barlow. However it is better suited for longer focal length wide fov ones like your 31mm celestron than barlows as it minimises vignetting, edge degradation and eye position movement. ES tele-extender is the same design I believe but much cheaper.

Ok thank you. in that case and also considering advice from others, I think I'll stick with my current 3 element TS optics barlow. I'm considering getting the Baader BBHS later this year though. As I'm interested in double stars, I think it will help with the views especially splitting close doubles. Hopefully fingers crossed.

1 hour ago, jetstream said:

👍

I would stick with a mirror diagonal and the Luminos I owned were nice eyepieces.

Thanks @Jetstream it's nice to hear this about Luminos, they do get a bad rap

11 hours ago, Franklin said:

The SW 2" Dielectric diagonal I had was like the one they supply with their ED refractors and I thought it was very good, it was very well collimated. Since then I've been using prism diagonals with all my refractors and prefer them for the shorter light path, especially for bino's.

Thanks @Franklin. I've not considered prism diagonals as I read somewhere they are more suited to slower FL scopes.

1 hour ago, Mr Spock said:

I'm more than happy with my Revelation 2" diagonal. It's a step up from the Skywatcher I have.

The TS Barlow is a three element apo design. I've not used one of these but I would expect it to be decent quality.

Thanks @Mr Spock, super helpful. Yes the barlow is a 3 element design and it gives views similar to the stock Celestron one I have that came with their eyepiece set. I guess as others are saying, differences are small in last mile performance in terms of value for money. 

1 hour ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

Some time ago I acquired a better quality Circle T diagonal for my Maksutov, replacing the budget diagonal that was part of the kit. I could not see any improvement in quality when viewing.

Elsewhere I have read that spending money on costly diagonals gets you better build quality and durability rather than any obvious visual improvement.

Later I bought a new £50 Celestron Omni barlow to try instead of the cheap kit Sky-watcher one. Again I could not see any difference at all, either visually or when doing planetary imaging.

On the basis of this, you should expect to see little or no difference should you upgrade, rather than an obvious improvement.

This is very helpful @Cosmic Geoff. Thanks for that.

11 hours ago, jetstream said:

Does it show much scatter? My Sw diag is vg with a bit of scatter but its just the one that came with the scope, yours is most likely an upgrade from mine.

Mine is also a stock diagonal that came with a Skywatcher evostar scope I bought a few years back. I haven't noticed scatter or anything wrong with the diagonal but wondering if views could be substantially better that I don't know about.

11 hours ago, John said:

Hello,

Just to complete the picture, can you let us know what eyepieces you currently have to use with this scope ?

On the performance increases, having often compared the views using both low-mid price and much more expensive accessories I feel the differences are almost always subtle so much more in the 10%-20% area. That's not to say that such improvements are not worth having but I guess I'm trying to be realistic with the gains that can be made.

Nice scope to own by the way

Thanks John. This is super helpful and precisely answers my question,  so gains are not mind blowing 40-50% let's say.

I currently have a set of 3 Luminos eyepieces 10mm, 15mm and 31mm and a Celestron x cel 9mm. I know others have strong opinion on the Luminos range but I like mine, they give me good views.

I love the new scope, there's something special about a large refractor, it's simplicity,  it's views and oh it looks great! 😀.  Here's a pic of a new member of our family 

Hi all

I eecently bought a new refractor (140mm APM doublet f/7) and considering whether I should upgrade some of my current optical train - a TS Optics 2.5x barlow and a Skywatcher dielectric diagonal - in case I'm "missing something" in terms of getting the most out of the scope visually. I mainly like visual observing, the moon, the planets, double stars and open clusters.

Here are the specs of my current barlow and diagonal.

https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/info/p55_TS-Optics-Optics-TSB251-2-5x-Barlow-Lens--1-25-inch---apochromatic-triplet-design.html

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/diagonals/skywatcher-di-electric-star-diagonal.html

I use the barlow extensively to get different magnifications with my limited set of 4 eyepieces so it's an essential part of my kit.

I'm considering buying a new barlow like the TeleVue Powermate 2.5x ~€300 and a TeleVue Everbrite 2" diagonal €500.  Total cost ~€800 + shipping.. not exactly cheap, could afford a new scope for that! 😐 

The key question is would either of these accessories be worthwhile upgrades i.e. have a marked difference visually let's say ~40-50% improvement in images or would the difference be only subtle ~10-20%. If the latter, I would rather not be wasteful in spending and save the hard earned cash for something else.

I would very much appreciate any advice on this especially from those who have experience of going from stock/mid range accessories to high end.

Thanks

For the benefit of anyone reading this thread. My new scope arrived (man it's big 😳 but still manageable). I've only used it once but my HEQ5 pro seemed to be able to carry it very nicely. Balancing it on the mount was a little bit more work than my 4inch ED but mainly because the tripod had to be set higher due to the longer tube...but doable.. Again not a bother once I get used to it and it's not something I'll hesitate setting up. All in all it took me 20 mins to set up and polar align, should be quicker next time.

 Once setup it gave very steady views settling times not more than my 4inch maybe 2 secs. There was no wind/breeze though but I wouldn't do stargazing if conditions weren't good.. just my preference. So that's not a concern to me. The scope tracked very well, the mount didn't seem to struggle in any way. I feel confident to put up my dslr next time to take pics (I only do short exposure or planets/moon so no autoguider). Saw Uranus for the first time ever!

Again I've only used the scope once but it gave me loads of confidence in the setup. Maybe the wooden tripod and hard floor helped. Total weight with different eyepieces in the range 10.5kg to 11kg. Recommended load capacity for HEQ5 is 15kgs for visual and 11kg for photos.

Thanks again everyone for your advice.

I wanted to post this for others considering a  bigger scope with an entry level mount. Everyone has their opinions but when I was searching on this topic I found mostly one sided advice that you shouldn't load a mount more than 50-75% of manufacturer recommended load capacity. So I'm putting my experience out there to balance the argument.

Those are some amazing pics @malc-c, just wow!

Thanks Stuart. I'm not inclimed to go into AP gung ho but I do like to occasionally put on a DSLR and do 60 sec subs to see more details on DSOs or so planetary photos at prime focus..this setup is also only under 11kg so hoping all will be fine.

@vineyard thanks a mill. yes my setup would be just over 10kg unless I use the large Luminos, then it is 10.8kg. so keeping my fingers crossed!

Just as an update, I have put am order through for the APM140.. I reached out to the CEO of APM Markus, a great guy and very knowledgeable on his products. He assured me the HEQ5 mount is more than capable of handling the scope. Fingers crossed.

1 hour ago, malc-c said:

For me I found the 200P + an ST80 + QHY5 + Canon D400 (plus finder and cabling) was about the limit for imaging with an HEQ5.

Approximate all up weight of around 11 - 11.5kg, so around 75% of the quoted maximum payload of the HEQ5

But that was on a solid concrete pier mount and inside an observatory which naturally gave some protection form the wind

 

@malc-c APM140 is of similar length and weight to the 8inch SW and as I'm only using for visual this is also looks promising. 👍

10 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

Hope you don't mind but I fixed your formatting. I found it really difficult to read. A good tip is if you are using copy and paste is to select paste as plain text only.

Thanks @Mr Spock I don't mind at all.. I was wondering why it came out like that. Yes I did c&p from my post on CN! Thanks for the tip. Live long and prosper 🙂

5 hours ago, Stefek said:

I had HEQ5 for a while. Also did belt mod as well as the same Geoptik saddle.

I used it for photo in a combination with 8" SCT (Edge HD). From the weight point of view  that is a piece of cake for the mount, however it was all together a bit sensitive to wind. 

At native f/10 , even with wind of 1.5 m/s , imaging was close to hopeless. That is not that much related to the mount itself , it was more a combination of of long FL , windy location, camera with small pixel, and so on.

The mount is now with one of colleagues and he is making brilliant photos with Esprit 80 on it. So , long story short , for visual , the mount will handle weight of 11 or 12 kg with no problems .  With better tripod than mine was , photo with that kind of weight could be reasonably managed, but if more than that for photo, I would consider "larger" mount. 

@Stefek thanks I also had a C8 which was no problem for the mount as it's a light scope. I only used it for visual though so it didn't give me any issue. It was the narrow fov of the sct that bothered me and I decided to sell the scope and get a large refractor! Good to know the mount can handle 11kgs as I think that will be the max payload with my setup (heavy 32mm Luminos eyepiece!). When I looked in forums I was disappointed people were advising payload of only 7.5 to 10kgs which concerned me a bit.

6 minutes ago, John said:

I have used an older HEQ5 mount with my 9.5kg 130mm triplet refractor, on a Berlebach UNI 28 tripod and it worked OK for visual. Some vibrations that needed a few seconds to dampen down at high magnifications but it was just about manageable. 

With the APM 140 being shorter than my F/9.2 triplet, you may well find that a newer HEQ5 is more stable than it was with my 130mm triplet. The use of a Losmandy dovetail bar will help as well.

 

Thanks @John that gives me confidence! I also have a Uni28, they're tall tripods which helps with the bigger refractors.

Thanks @vlaiv you've been more helpful than you can imagine. I was struggling to find people with real life experience with this setup. 

Thank you @vlaiv that's really helpful. You maxed out on the setup and still got results with photography..it sounds promising as my tube length is shorter and weight would be less for visual. Agree Berlebach tripod is great, it's more stable plus it looks good 😅

In terms of the dovetail, the scope already comes with a losmandy type. My HEQ5 Pro seems to be fitted for this type bit I'm not sure. Here's a pic of the bracket, this is a newer model and I thought you could put losmandy on these?

Hi all

I have a very specific question for people that have real, practical experience of using the HEQ5 Pro mount with a large refractor or an 8 inch reflector.

I have an HEQ5 Pro mount (2020 model but with a wooden Berlebach tripod) and I'm considering buying the largest ED refractor that this mount can reasonably hold. I'm mostly a visual observer with very light interest in photography (DSLR only,60 sec subs or live view planet captures, no fancy auto guiding or anything of that sort).but I have a light Altair 102mm refractor to do this so not bothered if I cannot use the large refractor for photography.

Now I've short listed the APM 140ED apo (or it's a semi apo but not looking to start a discussion on that topic pls ). The scope is 1m long in use and is 8.8kg including the dovetail. With the finder plus diagonal/eyepieces, the total weight of the setup will be in the range 10.2 to 10.8 kgs.

Now I know Skywatcher recommend up to 15kgs for visual bit I've seen users comment that we should discount this number anywhere in the region of 50% or 33%. So my question is of a practical nature not theoretical- does anyone here have experience with this sort of a setup with a heavier long(er) instrument on a HEQ5 Pro mount that can give me advice whether my setup is feasible for this mount or a bit too much?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.