Sky-Watcher 100 ED PRO Refractor

[lukehill]

So i have recently acquired a sky-watcher pro ED 100 with a HEQ5 Pro mount for £350.00 pounds. It also came with williams optics 40mm wide angle 2" eyepiece and  3 stock eye pieces from sky-watcher LIT series 5mm 9mm and the 20mm 1.25.  Now the good news is i got this for amazing price. However i was hoping to put this to use in astrophotography. So what are my options {as i know its an F/9} and that seems to be a problem in most forums for use in astrophotography.  If you have the time to reply that be great.

[Alan White]

That was an amazing bargain.
Great scope and a great mount.

I am an observer, not an imager, so no help other than you can get a focal reducer for the scope.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/pro-series/skywatcher-85x-reducerflattener-for-ed100.html

Super visual scope, had one a while back and loved it.

 

Edited April 14, 2020 by Alan White

[lukehill]

wow i didn't expect such a quick reply. Thanks for the link that is very helpful, although with my budget that's pretty expensive.  I guess i am going to have to save some money. But at least now i know there is a solution. Pity you can't  try b4 you buy.  

[John]

I'm not an imager so I can't help you there but you have got an amazing bargain. The scope alone of worth the price you paid. You got the mount for free

The William Optics eyepiece (is it a SWAN ?) is worth £50 if its in good nick as well.

 

[Nicola Hannah Butterfield]

You can try anything if you want, bend the rules see what works, if you get better unguided tracking than I do 60's best so far, but only had the mount over a month, it will be good to try on smaller DSO but times will be lengthy compared with an F/5 or faster, however I did this at F/7, my Sky Watcher 200P shot on a Canon 6D with a 1.4x tele converter make the scope a 1,400mm  F/7 60's ISO 400 up the ISO to 800 your in the same exposure range., I still have a lot to learn about making all the bits work together re stacking ect, been practising since early Feb with short exposures, till I got the new mount early March.

Edited April 14, 2020 by Nicola Hannah Butterfield

[MarkAR]

Nice looking scope.

No reason not to try some AP, the reducer flattener will be a great help.

[lukehill]

Yes it is a E-SWA40 Swan 40mm 2"  72 degrees of view.

[lukehill]

that image i would b proud to produce

 

[Nicola Hannah Butterfield]

7 minutes ago, lukehill said:

that image i would b proud to produce

 

It's not that difficult, I think learning how things all work together is the steepest curve, the biggest problem I had was getting the computer to chat with the mount, I can also do it remotely from my bedroom, the two star clusters I did last night M5 and M13 were monitored from my room. So in just over a month I have gone from unguided to remotely controlling my scope and image capture.

[Timebandit]

2 hours ago, lukehill said:

So i have recently acquired a sky-watcher pro ED 100 with a HEQ5 Pro mount for £350.00 pounds. 

 

 

Your name should be Dick Turpin 😀 what a find , what a price

If I was you then keep a look out for a reducer/flattener and have a go at AP with it, you may drop lucky and see one in the SGL sales at a bargain price. After a purchase like that you have nothing to loose, a great visual scope and with the ods and ends you may get some decent image's.

Good luck 👍

 

[lukehill]

Hi thanks, yeah i'm really  chuffed i was able to purchase this. Soon as i realized it had fl-53 lens i brought it without seeing anything else but the telescope which was inside its own matching hardcase. when he delivered the rest i was blown away; then when i got it out and tried it with the williams optics 40mm eyepiece i was blown away again...   now no pun intended but im starstruck. 

[Dave1]

That's a great price for both the Skywatcher ED100 Pro F9 and HEQ5 mount! Enjoy

[lukehill]

5 minutes ago, Dave1 said:

That's a great price for both the Skywatcher ED100 Pro F9 and HEQ5 mount! Enjoy

f/15 wow do u use a reducer ?                        

[lukehill]

2 hours ago, Nicola Hannah Butterfield said:

It's not that difficult, I think learning how things all work together is the steepest curve, the biggest problem I had was getting the computer to chat with the mount, I can also do it remotely from my bedroom, the two star clusters I did last night M5 and M13 were monitored from my room. So in just over a month I have gone from unguided to remotely controlling my scope and image capture.

Hopefully i can get close to where you at, 'once i learn the steep curve.

[Nicola Hannah Butterfield]

3 minutes ago, lukehill said:

Hopefully i can get close to where you at, 'once i learn the steep curve.

I think the problem is that there are so many aspect to imagery and your trying to tie them all together, I am fortunate, in that I have always had an interest in astronomy had previous scopes, so that in itself was no issue, trained in photgraphy back in the film days upto HND so again a good basic understanding, an interest in computers since the early 90's but tying all three together mmmm, all I need to do know is start and dedicate more observing time to a single object of an night, so far just been playing at catching a few things to see how things work together.

[lukehill]

well i've been telescopeless for 7 years and that was using a reflector telescope with a 6 " mirror. Untill i dropped my equipment tripping on a step on my way back into the house not only did i break the telEscope but it also broke the mount it came with and that was pretty much how i stopped for 7 dormant years but alas it has reawakened im pretty handy on a computer not so much with photography but i'm keen and enthusiastic. wallet is stopping me from advancing but then this is an expensive hobby or not?

[Kev M]

I have one of these, the same one in Gold, it works just fine for astrophotography.

"In my opinion"

It is a much better visual scope than the shorter focal length ones.( eg 80-ED )

It will beat these shorter focal length scopes on brighter objects such as planets and brighter galaxies and nebulae as they will be larger and will also have less colour distortion.

Wont be as good on fainter diffuse nebulae ( horses for courses ).

Suggest your best investment before a reducer is to sort out getting a guide camera. ( small ZWO ones seem popular, there are many others ).

Also you will need a astrophotography camera of some sort, again best budget option is a canon DSLR ( anyone with "liveview" is fine to start with EOS 450D onwards, readily available 2nd hand )

You have a bargain there indeed.

 

[Dave1]

39 minutes ago, lukehill said:

f/15 wow do u use a reducer ?                        

I don't image. So I don't need a reducer. 

David

[Skyline]

I would not bother with the SW 0.85x reducer, if you can afford it go for something like a 0.79x TSRED279 from TS. I recently done an image using a heq5 pro with my Celestron C100ED with the TS reducer at f/7.1

A 4" scope without a central obstruction with better contrast then my 130PDS.

The quality 4 element reducer gave a nice image of the M3 Globular cluster.

2 hours of data at 180sec subs no calibration files were used.

Zoom into the globular.