Upgrade or Buy new?

[serff]

Hi everyone.  I am wanting to get more into astronomy and into astro photography.  A few years ago, I was gifted a an 8" Hardin Deep Space Hunter (DSH-8) with a 9mm and 25mm Plossl lenses, a 2x barlow, and a bunch of filters.  The sight on the telescope is broken though so I just have to try and aim it at planets and hunt around till i find it.  The telescope is mounted on a turn table/lazy-susan type mount.  

So here's my question, for me to get into astro-photography, what would you all recommend I do?  Should I start with the telescope I have or should I buy something new?  I'm very new to all of this, but I'm assuming I would need a few things:

 - A computerized drive for the telescope

 - A new mount for that drive

 - DSLR (I have some I can use)

 - TMount adapter for the SLR

I would like to start with planetary, moon, solar photography (possibly?) and then move into DSO.  I live in a fairly dark location and am not far from darker locations.  So would it be better to buy a whole new setup or start with this scope? 

Things I don't like about the DSH-8:

 - It is HUGE and not portable.  Its a pain to just carry it outside when I want to use it.  I would love to have a setup I can take camping.

 - The scope is broken so I can't sight it...Not sure the best way to fix it?

 - When I do get locked onto something (say Jupiter for instance), images are not sharp with the 25mm.  Using the 2x makes it worse.  I don't know if this is the lens, telescope, atmosphere?

 - I have to manually track planets (like a caveman!! )

 - I've been unsuccessful in finding any DSO, but I chock that up to the fact that I aim the thing.

Santa might be willing to bring me a new telescope, but probably not much more than $300 worth...so not sure what that will get me.  Any insight you guys have would be great!

Thanks!

[Peter Drew]

Hello Serff, welcome to this forum.  The first thing I would do is get a replacement finder, secondly I would check the collimation as the telescope should perform better than you described, we can advise you on all this. Once you have the telescope working properly you will find it less of a pain to use. The telescope should break down into at least two parts so should be reasonably portable. The mount is an alt-azimuth Dobsonian design, this is unsuitable for long exposure photography but adequate for lunar, planetary and with suitable filters, solar. Long exposure photography is a quantum leap upwards from visual in terms of complexity and cost, I would enjoy visual for a while before going further.

You say you were given the telescope so that has not set you back financially, spend your extra cash on a more manageable telescope to take with you when camping.  Good luck.     

[serff]

Thanks for the insight Peter.  What kind of finder should I look for and once I find one, how do I install it correctally so that it is sighted correctly?  Is that just a manual process (point the telescope at something and aim the sight) or is there a more scientific/accurate way?  Any info you can provide about the collimation check would be great too.  

Thanks again!

[Avocette]

Googled Hardin DSH-8 and this review on CloudyNights popped up http://www.cloudynights.com/documents/hardin8.pdf The DSH-8 looks like a decent scope, especially if you make a few adjustments as mentioned in the review article.

The finder looks just like the very familiar ones which come with Sky-Watcher and Orion (US) scopes these days. Your broken one can certainly be repaired/adjusted or if necessary replaced. Assuming the mirrors are in good condition, collimating would be worthwhile, and once you've done that you should be able to find plenty of interesting DSOs.

A lot of us Dob users don't consider our nudging to be "tracking like a caveman!"

Send us some photos of your problematic finderscope and we may recognise/diagnose the problem for you.

[Peter Drew]

Hello again Serff. The finderscope should be a straightforward replacement of the previous type. It is an optical unit so you point the main telescope at a distant object, on the horizon if possible, centre it in the telescope eyepiece and then look through the finderscope. The finderscope will have crosshairs, centre the object on to the crosshairs with the adjustments provided on the finderscope bracket. Once you have done this, any object centred in the finderscope should be in the eyepiece of the main telescope.

A basic way to check the collimation is to remove the eyepiece and look into the telescope. The small secondary mirror should be centred relative to the focuser tube and facing it to produce a circular outline. You will also see a reflection of the main mirror displayed in the secondary mirror and three clips that hold the main mirror should also be seen. If all this is about right you are good to go. A more accurate method is to select a star, Polaris is a good choice as it barely moves. Out of focus you will see a bright disc and in the middle of the disc a black spot which is the shadow of the secondary mirror, if this is way off centre the optics will need collimating before they will give good results.

This all sounds more complicated than it really is, try it and get back for further instruction if needed. 

[SpaceWalker]

Hello Serf.
Congrats on your  scope, looks like a nice one. Judging by the review on CN it's a good all around Dob capable of both  planetary and  DSO observations. I'm sure after you get used to it you'll enjoy a lot. And you've already got some good advises to start.

From what you've described I can guess your scope is out of collimation. Collimation is a critical thing especially for high power planetary observations. One can't just overestimate the importance of this routine procedure for a Newtonian telescope. Collimation should be checked/adjusted before every observing session if you want to get sharp views. But you need some minimal tools and some practice to get it done properly.There are a lot of useful advises around the web including nice YouTube tutorials. Below are just few links on collimation of Newtonians I assume could be useful for the beginning.

Good luck!
 
link 1 , link 2 , link 3  , link 4  , link 5  .

[SpaceWalker]

As for your major question about AP, like Peter said, just lunar and planetary. You can use your Dob only for capturing video of the Moon and planets  using webcam or DSLR followed by selecting and stacking up the best frames in appropriate software like Registax etc. The Moon is the easiest object. I took some nice images of the Moon on my 8" f/6 Dob using my smartphone camera (handheld).  So, you'll get some initial practice and meanwhile figure out if you'll want to spend $3-5K for the adequate equipment for AP.

[serff]

Thanks for all the great advice and help everyone!  I'll work on the collimation.  One question, no one has really said anything about a motor.  If you wanted to just do planetary photography, I'm assuming you don't need one?  Can you achieve fast enough shutter speeds in a single exposure to not need the telescope to move during the shot?  Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions, but I've assumed that for DSO photography, that you need the telescope to move with the DSO while the shutter is open to get enough light to get anything worth while.  Maybe not though? Same with making a video, wouldn't you want the scope to track the planet while shooting?

[SpaceWalker]

Thanks for all the great advice and help everyone!  I'll work on the collimation.  One question, no one has really said anything about a motor.  If you wanted to just do planetary photography, I'm assuming you don't need one?  Can you achieve fast enough shutter speeds in a single exposure to not need the telescope to move during the shot?  Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions, but I've assumed that for DSO photography, that you need the telescope to move with the DSO while the shutter is open to get enough light to get anything worth while.  Maybe not though? Same with making a video, wouldn't you want the scope to track the planet while shooting?

You are right, for DSO AP a sturdy good mount with motor drive is a must. And also much more. You just can't get enough light for a single exposure, but for a long exposure you need tracking. If you have tracking than video make no sense because the dedicated cameras like SBIG or even DSLRs provide much better quality. Without motor video for planets is the only option. The Moon is an exception. Planets provide enough light when you combine multiple frames from your captured video.  And in this case your scope should be as steady as possible.

[Blazar]

Thanks for all the great advice and help everyone!  I'll work on the collimation.  One question, no one has really said anything about a motor.  If you wanted to just do planetary photography, I'm assuming you don't need one?  Can you achieve fast enough shutter speeds in a single exposure to not need the telescope to move during the shot?  Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions, but I've assumed that for DSO photography, that you need the telescope to move with the DSO while the shutter is open to get enough light to get anything worth while.  Maybe not though? Same with making a video, wouldn't you want the scope to track the planet while shooting?

Tracking makes it easier...though you are just moving and following a set of co-ordinates in reality.  you are not 'locked' onto anything and the mount is not being told to move by any extra equipment. For planetary a long focal length is a plus, so people use Barlow's, when you do that, the ability to follow it is quite useful! The two different disciplines of planetary and DSO each have different requirements for scopes and cameras, though I just enjoy trying to use what I have! Its a learning journey, and one that you can take as fast or as slow as you like.

Good luck!