ED80Pro vs WO ZS70

[tnorthy92]

What is the difference between these telescopes? I'm thinking of getting an imaging scope soon, but I don't have THAT much to spend (student life)

Trying to decide between one of them

The 80 ED is available at £349 and the ZS70 £369, both from the widescreen centre.

Any advice appreciated. They're going to be mounted on an EQ3 Pro. Unguided shots.

[E621Keith]

This is a hard one.

The ZS70 is f6 while the ED80 is f7.5, so in theory the ZS70 will be better for unguided shots as it allowed shorter exposure. It is also smaller which makes it easier for travel, although both scopes are very portable.

However, ED80 is suppose to have better optics and is a proven design. It's larger aperture gives it 30% more light grasp which makes it more useful as a general purpose scope.

[FarSide]

+1 for the ED80.

[Arushin]

+1 for the ED80.

Make that +2

[ollypenrice]

If you had a good mount and an autoguider and the reducer-flattener it would be a fairly easy 'yes' for the ED80. If you don't, then it becomes a fairly easy 'yes' for the little WO. F7.5 is too slow for imaging, especially on an unguided mount.

But to get into imaging on a tight budget why use a scope at all? Buy a good mount (HEQ5) and use a camera lens till you have the dosh.

Olly

http://ollypenrice.smugmug.com/Other/Best-of-Les-Granges/22435624_WLMPTM#!i=1793644788&k=r8HTK72

[nightfisher]

+1 for the WO70, it has a better focuser than the ED80, shorter focal length and very good optics

[nmoushon]

If you had a good mount and an autoguider and the reducer-flattener it would be a fairly easy 'yes' for the ED80. If you don't, then it becomes a fairly easy 'yes' for the little WO. F7.5 is too slow for imaging, especially on an unguided mount.

But to get into imaging on a tight budget why use a scope at all? Buy a good mount (HEQ5) and use a camera lens till you have the dosh.

Olly

http://ollypenrice.s...44788&k=r8HTK72

+1 For this idea.

This is what I did starting out. Got a decent mount and put my camera and lens on it and was pretty darn good. Though one down side is that the standard lenses that come with DLSR now a days have pretty bad chromatic aberration and coma. Especially when you jump up the ISO and exposure lengths. But you can still get very good 30-60sec exposure with out bad aberration or coma. But you can get good shots of large objects like M42 and they will fit in your FOV quite nicely with a 300mm lens. This was unguided too. With good polar alignment you could even get up to 90-120sec exposures depending on your FL. I would start this way. Test out if you really want to get into imaging so you dont waist a lot of money of a mount and scope and accessories. Then if you do you are already half way there (got the good mount) then all you need is a good scope. And if you get one second hand they really arent all too expensive.

[tnorthy92]

Thanks guys. Think I'm going to get just a mount for now, already bought a range of camera lenses, and happen to have a prime 200mm. So they'll do for now :-)