What to choose for Lunar & Planetary imaging

[Skyline]

For a few months now I have been thinking about buying a scope for Lunar imaging work but yet undecided about what to buy, ideally I would like to mount it on my eq5 but could stretch to a Heq5 but what would make a good scope with that mount? ED100, SCT or a Maksutov scope.

Thanks, Al.

[ronin]

For lunar and planetary the scope of preference appears to be the SCT or Mak. Simply the planets are bright enough to take magnification so these scope enable that.

An EQ5 should be fine, within sensible limits, as many people use them on an Alt/Az mount.

Will ask if you intend to go DSO imaging after planets?

If so then the SCT/Mak is not good for these.

You can use a short refractor however the image would likely need magnifing and to do this requires a reasonable barlow, otherwise the final image is poor.

I will also ask if this is for planets exclusively?

There are really just 3 imageable planets and the Moon, at least on the equipment most of us will use.

Remember Jupiter rotates quick so exposues of Jupiter are time limited to something like 60-90 seconds - agruements over the actual value after which the image has moved too much for the software to get alignment when stacking.

[Skyline]

Yes, the scope would be purely used for Lunar & Planetary imaging, I find my 130PDS for dso imaging sufficient with my canon camera.

Al.

[Grotemobile]

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/maksutov/skywatcher-skymax-180-pro.html

This is the scope I would go for.

They do smaller ones.

Steve