Switching from Dobsonian to Equatorial Mount

[KlaatuVerataNecto]

First of all I wanted to give a big thanks to this community for all help in picking the right equipment and give some advice to those troubled as to make a right choice (as once I was).

 

 

 

The first ‘big’ telescope I got was Skywatcher 8 inch Newton Dobsonian 200/1200 with two eye pieces 25mm and 10mm. I had bigger budget so why I did not get 10 or 12 inch? Well because 8 inch it’s a prefect size for easy transportation.  If you will be moving it around and trust me YOU WILL BE and an 8 inch is a combination of big enough/comfortable. I didn’t know this was so important but it really is and many of you know what I mean.
Why Dobsonian? Well because it is cheap and again comfortable, you just  take it out from your car boot , stick the eyepiece, align finder-scope and you are ready to go. In less than 2 minutes you can enjoy the sky. Another point is that it makes you study the sky as you have to find celestial objects manually. For some this might be very frustrating. It was for me at the beginning as I could only find and view planets , M42 (Orion Nebulae) and the Moon obviously.  I really liked the expression of my friends showing them Saturn. They were like: ‘WOW ?! I can see the rings!’
It became harder with fainter DSO’s, but after few nights I become to find more and more stuff and learn how to point my telescope to them.

 

As for the astrophotography goes I found that little can be done except the Moon. Here is my first photo of the Moon using Canon 6D DSLR.

 

 

I liked the photography so much that I decided to sell my dobsonian and get the same 8 inch but with motorized equatorial mount. Since the new equipment had a high cost I looked at the second hand stuff and I found a bargain set with 8 inch Celestron, HEQ5 Pro and eyepieces 32mm, 20mm and two 2x barlow (never used 32mm before and now I consider it as a must). It took me 15 minutes to learn to assemble it (level the tripod, mount the motor, counterweights and OTA). Polar aligning took a bit longer and still it is the most tedious part. The total  time of the setup and even if you are good at it is around 20 to 30 min. Then using the SynScan remote I do 3 start alignment which in my case had couple of WTFs with a lot of swearing: once I forgot to completely close the RA lock lever (or was it dec lock lever) and the other time setting incorrect date (setting date in European format (dd/mm/yyy) in the remote accepting US format (mm/dd/yyyy) ) and my telescope was going crazy.  Once all is setup the viewing is amazing as you don’t need to concentrate on manually moving the scope. From that point I started to photograph stuff and it is so much fun as you get to see stuff that a human eye can’t.
Below are my first attempts of imaging DSO:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope my experience can help anyone to get the feeling of the first contact with telescopes and I recommend to follow the same path which is:
start with a basic stuff and see if you like it.

 

 

 

At this moment I’m looking to buy an auto-guider to improve my photos by setting longer exposures and possibly get a smaller refractor (grab and go for quick viewing on the rooftop).

[laudropb]

Very nice report of your first experiences. It will help others as they start out. Some lovely images too.

[PeterCPC]

You are on the astrophotography slippery slope now

Peter

[baggywrinkle]

Nice one. Good report.

[Astro Imp]

Good informative report with some nice insights which I feel will be useful to others starting out. 

[ronl]

A very informative report for those starting out in this wonderful obsessive hobby, the one thing I love is finding targets, to me that is 

what gives the buzz, having go-to is something I have and probably will never consider, but having a motorized mount is a must have,

for me anyway, again I have never considered imaging so I hope you have many happy hours of fun and success with your new venture.

Clear Sky's,  oh and by the way, really nice images.  

[RT65CB-SWL]

Hi 'R2-D2' and welcome to SGL. Nice set of images and first report.

[BeerMe]

Great pics, thanks for sharing your experiences

[spartan2007]

nice report,great pics.