Anyone Imaging With a 250PX(Successfully)?

[jarlaxle2k5]

Some nice pics there!

Dobs are underestimated

[brantuk]

There is often confusion over what is meant about dobs being no good for photography. What folks are really telling you is that dob mounts, being alt/az and mostly manually driven, are no good for photography - which is quite true.

There are a couple of exceptions though - with the recent addition of motors and goto to some dob mounts, imaging planets become a good prospect. Also - if you take the tube off the dob base and pop it on an appropriate sized eq mount, then imaging the deep sky is a great prospect with the extra aperture and generally faster focal ratios.

Some folks have even had success imaging with a manual dob base and large aperture newtonian on it. Bear in mind some of the biggest obsy class scopes in the world are on alt/az mounts with huge aperture ota's - and the images produced by them are world class. So it's not always as clear as "dobs are no good for astro imaging".

[johnrt]

Dobs are underestimated

I don't think they are - your results are what you'd expect to see from a tracking dob after stacking up some 30 sec exposures, some pretty good basic shots of some very bright DSO's and some excellent solar system images.

Unfortunately the OP's dob is a manual without tracking and at the potential investment of £1000 on an NEQ6 I think would make him pretty serious about imaging DSO's. A static Dob at that focal length is going to give you 3/4 secs before star trailing ruins every sub.

Imaging DSO's is all about the the mount and how sturdy and accurate it is, sub exposure times of 5 minutes minimum are needed for most targets and many think nothing of going up to 30 minutes to get their excellent results. How do they do this? The biggest, baddest, sturdiest EQ mount they can get their mitts on. On top of that mount the bigger the OTA and the longer the focal length means the more strain you put on the mount.

Imagers covert small, light, fast f/ratio scopes with short focal lengths - maximum light capture, minimum strain and stress on the mount below. The 130PDS or an ED80 on an HEQ5 minimum is sensible thinking.

Buy the books, do the reading, thinking and asking then the spending.

[jarlaxle2k5]

of course guys depend what you are looking for when you do AP.

If you want to be able to make pictures Hubble style than it is true, you need really good stuff and a dob goto on alt-az is limited but as beginner i am quiet impressed with the results that i get with my little dob and it is a good school for the future in case i decide to upgrade and move toward EQ mounts with a dedicated scope

[valvenus]

I got these moon shots last night using a phone adaptor with my 250px

[tich]

I've had success with a 250P on an NEQ6 although I'm by no means an expert. I used to image with a 200P but was given a 250P dob tube & rings so I just use this as my main observing scope & image with it now & then.

All these are 3 minute unguided subs, not perfect as my processing skills are somewhat poor plus a couple fo images are showing eggy stars due to poor polar alignment but I'm quite happy with it.

I don't find it any harder to use that the 200P although there is a noticable difference in weight but as with all large-ish newts if there's a breeze about then you can forget about imaging.







Jupiter & 3 moons using the 250P & QHY5L-II camera.

[valvenus]

wow there amazing pics  

[RogerOfHeaton]

Hi Folks, I know this is an old thread but anyway....I got my 250PX back in March 2014, and then "graduated" (yeah right) to an equatorial platform bbut was not satisfactory.

I finally made the move to an AZ EQ6 GT mount in January 2015, and it has worked well for imaging. Two provisos - get a coma corrector - I use both a Skywatcher 0.9x coma corrector and also a Baader MPCC III - and only image when windspeed drops below 12-13mph.

 

[Tiny Small]

I tried to do things cheap and have struggled for years. I finally bit the bullet and bought a good, second hand NEQ6 and mounted a 130PDS on top of it. There is a lot to be said for massively over-mounting a scope as the mount doesn't even know the scope is there. To get around the short focal length, I use a camera with small pixels. This presents its own challenges but nothing that can't be overcome with some free learning.

Here is a recent image from the 130 PDS and although it is a long way from perfect, none of the flaws are a result of the mount not performing.

 

[MattJenko]

I went this route to multi purpose my 250px. It is a Dob, visual light bucket on AzEQ6 in Az mode and EQ imaging setup in EQ mode. Couldn't tell you which I prefer...