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Upgrading from the Meade ETX125

jasonutting

By jasonutting
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jasonutting

jasonutting

Posted
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Hi all!

i have a etx125 and want to get into astrophotography, I know that this scope is rubbish for that unless its for planets and the moon, I am wanting to upgrade so I can start on deep sky.

i am looking at 2 scopes, Meade 6000 series apo on a lx80/ eq5 mount or an 8" lx 200 with wedge.

Any advice on what's best?

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VigdisVZ

VigdisVZ

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Hi and welcome.

To sum up quickly, an EQ-mount is generally better than a wedged one. If you can afford the HEQ-5 over the EQ-5 its a much much more capable mount.

And before you invest, be sure to read Steve's book "Making Every Photon Count" http://www.firstlightoptics.com/books/making-every-photon-count-steve-richards.html before you invest in any AP gear. The book will save you a lot of confusion and frustration and possibly help you avoid bad investments.

Best of luck with your purchases. See you in the other forum sections ;)

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JamesF

JamesF

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Carl is right on the button. Read the book before committing yourself. There's a big difference between planetary/lunar/solar imaging and DSO imaging and you really need a good understanding of what you're up to before deciding on what would be an appropriate telescope to use.

James

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swag72

swag72

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Another +1 for Steve's book. It really is the business.

AP is a tricky old hobby at the best of times. There is quite a number of people on here that would recommend an HEQ5 mount as the minimum and an ED80 refractor. This is a really good starters setup and also one that is used by many accomplished astrophotographers. It's as plug and play as you can get as well and so will serve you well to learn the ropes and get to grips with AP.

What kind of camera are you planning on using? The chances are that you will need some type of focal reducer / flattener with the scope as well. Also you may want to go the whole hog and add some guiding so that you can take long exposures (you really do need benefit hugely from these with AP) - depending on which way you do this, you may also need a laptop.

At the end of it all. once you have captured your data you will need to stack it and process it. There are some free programmes out there that you can use for this (Deesp Sky Stacker for stacking and GIMP for processing for example) - To be honest I think that the data capture is the easy part. For me I can spend as long again on processing an image. So you may want to factor time into it as well.

Hope that helps a little and gives a little insight.

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glowjet

glowjet

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Hi Jason and welcome to SGL, that is quite a loaded question and as Roger has said, it is best asked in the section for those wanting to start imaging. As to what is best ?, you could well find a very expensive answer to that one :icon_santa:

John.

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