Cheap wide field/dso scope

[vphotographic]

To compliment my mak127 for dso imaging and widefield

Orion st80 looks ok ? What do you think ??

Paul

[jgs001]

Paul, it meets both the cheap and wide field parameters ... the ST80 is a great little scope for the money, but for imaging, it suffers from a lot of CA. Something like the Baader Semi Apo filter will help, but not completely eliminate it. I can probably dig out some images I did with my ST80 clone if you want.

[garethmob]

the skywatcher 80st is identical to the orion 80st (they are both made by synta) there might be a slight difference in acesserys but looking at this review

http://www.astromart.com/articles/article.asp?article_id=605

they look the same apart from the finder

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/startravel/skywatcher-startravel-80-ota.html

obviously it is a acro so bright objects will show fringeing unless you use a fringe killer (think baader sell one)

whats your budget paul?

[vphotographic]

Please do, I viewed m82 last night on the 127 and it was ok but not overwhelming I must say but I'm guessing it's because it's a slow scope.

Paul

[jgs001]

here's a couple

The Mak is going to be hard to use for Deep Sky imaging as it's so slow, you'll need really long exposure times, and therefore a good quality mount. That won't make any difference for visual though, that requires aperture for gathering the light and the resolving power. I'll leave one of the visual galaxy hunters to comment further.

[Peter Drew]

For visual use, a 80mm scope won't overhaul a 127mm scope regardless of focal length apart from field of view. Photography is a completely different matter.

[vphotographic]

They are nice pics there, I'll stick at it with Mak for a while then look into a 80 frac in the future.

Paul