picture this

[Daniel-K]

ok i have yet again changed my mind and now have a set plan for my AP set up currently i have ED 80 for wide field and a st80 for guiding on a NEQ6 now i was wondering is it possible to have a 8 inch f4 GSO with a qhy8 imaging with a OAG for guiding and a ED 80 on a SW guidescope mount piggyback taking widefield ? if not then i obviously i would just use each bit of kit as its intended for I.E ED80 for wide field and the GSO for galaxies etc etc is there any reason this would not work?? it would leve the mount with about 5kg spare aswell

[nmoushon]

That would all work if you dont put it all on at the same time. For imaging a good rule of thumb is not to not have your equipment equal up to more than half your mounts load capacity. If you want your GSO for galaxies and use an OAG thats fine just don't put it on the mount with your ED/ST80. Use them separately. It will help keep you for tossing a lot of your subs.

[Daniel-K]

but arnt they heavy duty for a reason? once i have got the qhy i will then have around £600-800 for a nice imaging scope what is there apart from the quattro and the GSO's??

[nmoushon]

The mount can support the load it is rated for no problem. But the closer you get to the limit the hard the mount has to work. For visual use you could stack the mount to its limit or a bit over you you probably wont notice much if any that the mount is working hard. But for AP when you start going over half the rated weight then you start noticing that mount is have to work harder through your images. A gear slips or something like that that you would never notice visually gets picked up in the image. The small vibrations of the motors having to really kick in to move the mount you'll barely, if not at all, notice it visually buy the camera will pick that up and you'll notice it in your images. But this is a rule of thumb not a stated fact. So if you go over half a bit its probably not going to be a problem.

For other scopes it really depends on what you want to do with it and which type you want. Do you want more widefield or do you want the nice close ups on galaxies? Then you need to decide if you want a newt or a frac? Fracs are nice because you don't have to worry about maintenance as much as you do with a newt. But newts tend to me faster than a frac without having to buy a reducer and they also have longer FL, which is good for galaxies. This is comparing apples to apples in the same price range of course.

[JamesF]

I'm fairly sure there are people who have an ED80 or similar size scope mounted side-by-side with something like a C8 or C9.25 and use the SCT for guiding when imaging with the wide field scope quite successfully. I feel sure I read about someone doing just that recently, but I can't for the life of me recall where I read it

James