What refractor would you recommend for travel astrophotography?

[Amra]

Hey everyone, 

 

I want to buy a refractor for travel, especially to eclipses and to use with my Star Adventurer (5KG load capacity.) and Sony a7S camera - so would be great if it was full frame compatible. 

It's been a long time since I last researched this so I'm not sure what developments have happened since then. 

I looked at the Williams Optics Star 71 beforehand and liked it, but it's 350mm focal length is a little bit lacking for the Moon/Sun close-up, I wish I could use a barlow or something on my full frame for that purpose only, otherwise the focal length is fine. Also it seems that it has a 30mm (APS-C) imaging circle.

 

Another option is the SW ED80, weighs around 3kgs and has a 600mm focal length, needs a field flattener though and probably doesn't have a full frame image circle. 

 

You guys have some other refractor in mind that might fit the bill? 

[Mr niall]

So you’re looking at a focal length of about 500 ish? To be honest, I’ve shot the moon at 1250mm with a Skymax 90 and it still doesn’t fill anywhere like the whole sensor. A small Mak might be an option if you are shooting just the sun and moon a nd using a dslr - and they’re light and compact and fit nicely on the star adventurer - you could probably get away with a 102 Mak in all honesty.

Off the top of my head the only I can think of that would come close would be the SW Startravel 102. If you go down the ED route at these focal lengths things get very heavy very quickly, but there might be issues with CA on such bright targets- maybe a more knowledgeable member could comment?

here is my moon at 1250 with an eos1300d, only took up about 50% ish of the frame and is cropped. Btw this is a single frame, not stacked so much sharper results are possible.

 

[Fozzie]

What about the new vixen 81ed mkii.. 625mm FL, about 3.5kgs and designed for use with full frame DSLR.. expensive though for an 80mm relative to the 80mm ed skywatcher offering..

[rl]

ZS61 plus a barlow lens and field flattener ( not together..) opens up a lot of options...

[Amra]

Thanks for all the suggestions, I realise I need a high FL to fill the Moon on the sensor as it snugly fits on my Canon 1100D APS-C sensor at 1000mm FL on my newtonian, but for solar eclipses a little wider is fine and I can crop a bit with 12MPs.

Isn't a barlow a problem on a full frame sensor or can you get 2 inch big barlows so you don't lose part of the image? 

Really the ultimate setup I think would be a short FL refractor if I could succesfully use barlows with it just for Moon/Sun shooting, because then I'd have a scope for deep sky as well with low FL and more forgiving for track accuracy on the Star Adveturer. 

 

I will check these scopes out, cheers! 

[fireballxl5]

Another option for a light-weight, wide field and solar eclipse setup...

 

HTH, Andy

[Amra]

That scope looks great.