My Next Telescope

[Zeus]

Hi All

I am new to this forum and need some advice

I have played around with an old Russion scope for 6 years now and I am now ready to take the plunge to buy something a little more sophisticated and something that will last me a few years.

My thoughts so far are:

Celestron CPC 9.25 GPS XLT

Celestron Eyeopener Kit

Orion StarShoot Deep Space II CCD Camera

Celestron f/6.3 focal reducer

I do not want to make a mistake and therefore would appreciate any guidance before committing

Cheers

Zues

[blinky]

Welcome to the Lounge Looks like a good setup but I will leave it to some of the others here to advise you. I aint an expert by any means on the diffrent brands/types of scopes.

[Kai]

Personally and i mean personally i would look at the Revelation eyepiece kit in comparison to the Celestron and i would check out Astronomiser's website for Ccd's as they seem to be well recieved.

Cant argue with the scope / reducer though

What sort of imaging are you planning on doing ?

[gary1968]

Howdy, welcome to the forum. Tha scope will give you great views of deep space objects. The eyepiece kit is also good but I agree with KH, get the revelation eyepiece set, its cheeper.......

As for the camera, I got the Orion Star Shoot 2 and its not very good at anything other than Lunar work. I'd hope however the the Deep Space camera is better. I'm sure someone on here will offer advise on that though.

Gary

[SteveL]

Hi Zeus

The CPC 9.25 is a nice bit of kit... one word of warning though. As its on a fork mount (Alt/Az), you individual images from a sequence will be limited to somewhere between 20 and 45seconds (depending on where in the sky you are pointing), and any longer than that then your images will start to show field rotation. This isnt a problem for brighter objects (Globs, Moon, Planets) as your images can be short, but for anything that requires longer images to capture, you will run into problems. You can overcome this by using a wedge, or you could go for a 9.25" OTA on a GEM mount to eliminate the field rotation problem.

(Note, field rotation only affects imaging, you wont even be aware of it if you are just visually looking at things)

[Zeus]

Thank you all for the sound advice

I also see that there is a special offer on some of the kit starting yesterday

Having only had little choice of eye pieces with my previous scope I am hoping that the eye opener Kit is all I will need to get some serious use.

Thanks for th advice on imaging...

I am a novice at this aspect and all advice is more than welcome.

[Whippy]

Welcome to the forum Zeus .

Purely out of curiosity, what 'old Russian' scope have you been playing about with?

Tony..

[proflight2000]

The russian scope is an interesting one, I have read a few reports that they were a lot better than people ever imagined, be interesting to get an insight.

[Kenny_10_Bellys]

Hi Zeus, I recently became the proud owner of a CPC-800 GPS so I can safely safe the scope is top notch and should give you a decent view of pretty much anything you aim it at. It's no huge lightbucket Dobsonian, but an excellent all rounder. I bought the 8" as it was on special offer and because I have to travel a distance to my viewing site, so anything larger would have been a real pain. Imagine my shock when the scope showed up and the blumming thing was huge! It's going to take a lot of humphing around and a special case with wheels for it will set me back a minimum of $340 if I can track a British one down. Still a nice scope though.

I also bought the Celestron eyepiece set to go with it and it's...ok. Just ok. I've only really owned Meade stuff before and had one 8mm Celestron eyepiece which wasn't that nice in comparison. When I got the Celestron kit it turns out that most of their smaller eyepieces aren't that brilliant, but I imagine unless I pay big money I'm not going to get a great 5-12mm EP anyway and I doubt the Revelation cheapo kit will be any better. It does the job, nothing more.

If you're imaging then, like me, you will be restricted to exposures of about 30 seconds tops unless you buy a wedge. The scope tracks nicely and the goto is pretty accurate, but any longer exposure and the wedge becomes essential. For my camera I've got a little Meade LPI but I'm going to get myself an Atik 16ic for proper deep-sky stuff. All I need now is the camera, a wedge, an ST80 guidescope, rings, balance weights and hours of practice and the £1000 or so to buy all that!

[Zeus]

Hi

I a back home in the UK after a long weekend in Boston (MA) and can start to answer some of the questions

The Russion scope was a TAA-1MT (not that it means anything) which I bought from a local camera store around 7 years ago.

With the Kellner eyepiece and Barlow lens 3 it boasted a magnification of 162...

The instruction were a typical Russion to English translation and I must admit left a lot to be desired...

It was supplied with a mains to 12v motorised tracking mechanism.... however the drive mechanism had so much slack in the movement it was almost impossible to use.

However it has given me many nights of pleasure and will be going to a new worthy home shortly.

[themos]

Are you sure it wasn't a TAL-1MT like this one?

http://www.npz.sol.ru/katalog.php3?lng=eng&id=tal-1m

[Zeus]

Hi

YES!!

Some of the measurements are slightly different etc... but to look at it you wouldn't know the difference.

[themos]

Well, MY next one is looking to be the Skywatcher 250PX Dobsonian if rumours of a bonus turn out to be substantiated.

!!!

[maroon bells]

Like Kenny said don't forget to take size and weight into account. I am starting to realise the drawbacks of having a large scope with my 9.25. It takes a long time to get it all out and set it up and that can detract from your enjoyment. It's something that's so easy to overlook.

Matthew

[Zeus]

Thanks Matthew for that piece of advice

I have just spent an hour just looking up at the stars without a telescope and have wondered at what is viewable with the naked eye..

I have seen countless satelites....5 / 6 meteorites plus lots more.

I am sure that if I am selective with my nights I might even get the wife to help set up