Guide Scope Companion for 70 ED

[arrayschism]

I happen to have bought a Williams Optics Zenithstar 70 ED a few years ago which has since sat gathering dust. It's now come to that time where I have decided to get into astrophotography after years of fun with a newt.

I've already completed the required first step of purchasing "Making Every Photon Count" - which is an excellent read, I must say.

Next step for me is - get the best mount I can save up some pennies for... now having shed a few things on a well known auction site I have enough for an EQ6-R (ordering soon).

For gathering the images, I'm going to start out with an old Canon of some sort and see how it goes.

Beyond this, I have thought about guide scopes - I'm just not sure what would fit with the 70E D - a lot of folk seem to have guide scopes that are 80 mm in size, larger than my ED! Anyone here offer some advice please on what would fit my 70E D?

[geordie85]

Have you thought about a finder guider/ Orion mini guide scope? 

 

[Laurin Dave]

A 50mm or 60mm guidescope should work with that.  Do you have a guide camera? Take a look on the First Light Optics website under Guide Cameras in Astro Imaging, they have a selection scopes and cameras. Interestingly their package including camera for the 80mm Startravel is only £10 more than for the 50mm Skywatcher guidescope so that option would future proof yourself against a larger/longer fl  imaging scope.  The EQ-6R mount would have no problem with load and the 80mm would give better guiding although it may not be noticeable with your camera scope combo

[souls33k3r]

The Qhy Miniguidescope kit (includes the guidescope and QHY5LL-ii Mono) camera kit is worth to look at. It has yet to fail me and i've tried it on my 71mm, the 8" SCT and now will be going on the new refractor

[laser_jock99]

Use the ED70 as the guidescope for your 'proper' scope i.e. the Newt!

It's what I do........

[arrayschism]

Thank you everyone, that's given me some food for thought! I'll consider the options:- weight, future proofing, etc. etc.