My best Saturn - ED80

[mightymonoped]

I'm quite chuffed with this as:-

- It was only captured as an afterthought, once I had finished with the Moon.

- I think it's a reasonable approximation of what can be seen through the ED80.

Have tried not to push it too hard on the processing; I know there can be more detail, but I thinks it's at the expense of looking natural.

Any advice on colour, processing etc gratefully received I know it's not a planetary scope, but it's the best that I've got for now!

ED80, TAL 3x Barlow, ToUcam in optimised colour mode (10 fps) 90/900 frames, undriven alt-az mount

Tony

[Grant]

Excellent Saturn there Tony! Amazing from an undriven Alt-Az mount!

How do you find the 80ED? Would you recommend it?

[jcm]

Brilliant image from an undriven mount.

John

[dazza1639]

Thats great Tony

Darren

[geppetto]

Smashing image Tony

ED80's a great all rounder 8)

[mightymonoped]

Thanks all

Grant, I love the ED80 to bits it's such a great all-rounder. I spent a full year considering which scope to by as my first (apart from a cheap store bought refractor about 25 years ago!) and i am sooooo glad I went for the ED80. First and foremost, the optics are great. It doesn't require any playing around with re collimation etc. I haven't had any issues hanging all manner of weight off the focusser. Virtually no cooldown. Pretty easy to grab n go (bearing in mind I'm on crutches permanently, so I really do need a grab n go scope). It may not be a planetary scope but it's good enough to learn the ropes on, then you can use it as a first-class deepsky imaging scope for wide-field work.

IMO, it's a first-class investment. It will improve as the mount you put it on does and any mechanical issues can be addressed through items added later (e.g. Moonlite focusser etc).

I guess it boils down to performance versus look and feel, performance gets my vote

Tony

[geoff_k]

I agree with all that, I have an ED80 as well as a monster Newtonian and the ED80 punches above its weight in many respects.

As for your Saturn image, when you consider its only a 3 inch scope its still pretty good. It does a fairly good job on Jupiter as well.

One little plus that I discovered was that with my Toucam Pro and a focal reducer I can get the whole Moon onto the webcam. Hope to do a complete series of Moon images (when I can see it of course)

[mightymonoped]

Same avi's, reprocessed and resized just for yuks

Tony

[ianmwatson]

That's a very nice image, I achieved something similar with my 80mm refractor. I agree that they make great all round scopes.