Planetary Imaging Setup - advice ?

[badgers]

I'm sorry I've been away from the forums for an age with work and other things.

Sadly the new LED lights on my street and the appalling weather dampened my enthusiasm for DSO imaging, although I plan to dust off the ATIK, 80/480 and the Canon 200mm lens and get some work in this winter.

I wanted to setup a planetary imaging rig to give me something to do on nights where I don't want to fight with guiding and alignment etc.

I've a HEQ5 mount already and have been offered a Celestron C9.25 at a decent price.

Will the HEQ5 mount deal with the C9.25 ok for lunar and planetary imaging ?

What kind of Camera would be good for this ? Was thinking of a DMK21AU618, or similar.

Is it worth going for a mono camera, or would it just be a whole lot easier getting started with a colour CCD ?

Anyway, hope to be posting images again on here again soon!

Thanks,

Anton

[nmoushon]

For lunar/planetary I would think the C9.25 on the HEQ5 would work just fine. Now I don't do that kind of imaging so someone with experience might offer up something different.

As for the camera I would definately go down the CCD route. If you want to get serious about planetary imaging I would go mono and filters but if you are wanting ease of use then I would go color.

[Owmuchonomy]

Hi Anton, in short yes and yes. Click my Flickr link to see my first planetary efforts with my HEQ5 pro and my C9.25. These were literally my first efforts on these 3 planets.  I use a Canon 60D that runs movie crop mode at 60fps.

[SnakeyJ]

The 618CCDs are good, though the ASI120M seems to have the upper hand for PI.