New Equipment Advice - Visual and Imaging

[jtf_ie]

Hi All,

 

New member here, looking for some advice.

I purchased a Skywatcher 130M (my first scope) in August this year and I have caught the Astro bug!

 

Therefore, I am considering upgrading my equipment early next year (March/April) and would really appreciate some advice.

 

I am already a hobby photographer, so naturally I wanted to attach my DSLR (Canon cropped sensor) to the telescope. Having done some online reading I have realised that visual astronomy and astrophotography are very different disciplines. I have 3 kids, so it is important for me to be able to continue to do visual astronomy (both for mine and their benefit), but I also want to start getting into some astrophotography.

Therefore, I am actually considering buying 2 new telescopes, one as an upgrade for visual (and perhaps planetary / lunar photography) and one to get started on some basic DSO astrophotography, as well as one new mount to support both (not at the same time). For now, I will use the Canon DSLR that I already have for imaging and will not start with autoguiding (but would hope to introduce that later).

Unfortunately my budget is quite limited at aprpox. £1500 and obviously I would like to maximize the value and experience I can achieve with that budget.

 

I have already reached out to First Light Optics for advice and they were great with giving me some solid information, but for obvious reasons did not really provide any personal opinions.

 

I was considering the following options and would love your opinions on these as well as any other alternatives you might suggest:

 

Option 1:

• Mount: Skywatchter EQ5 Pro Goto
• Visual: Skywatcher Skymax 127 Mak
• Imaging: William Optics Zenithstar 73 II
• + William Optics Z73 flattener

(approx £1550)

 

Option 2:

• Mount: Skywatcher EQ5 Pro Goto
• Visual: Skywatcher Skymax 150 Mak
• Imaging: Skywatcher Evostar 72ED
• + Skywatcher 0.85 reducer flattener and EvoFrame camera rotator

(approx £1540)

 

Option 3:

• Mount: Skywatcher HEQ5 Pro Goto
• Visual: Skywatcher Skymax 127
• Imaging: Skywatcher Evostar 72ED
• + Skywatcher 0.85 reducer/flattener and EvoFrame camera rotator

(approx £1525)

 

As you can see Option 1 favours the Imaging scope, Option 2 favours the Visual scope and option 3 favours the mount.

 

Some additional questions:

1. Does anyone know anything about the Skywatcher EQM-35 mount? It has a slightly higher payload capacity than the EQ5 and is very slightly cheaper, but there seems to be a lot of skepticism generally online about the quality with most people still recommending the EQ5, but without any real evidence for that. 
2. From what I understand, the ZS73 his a much higher build quality than the Evostar 72ED and the Evostar is consider a "semi-APO" while the ZS is a true APO scope. However, the ZS73 is twice the price. S0, what are the real tangible differences in results between the two?
3. Similarly with the skymax 127 vs the skymax 150. I understand that aperture is everything, but what would the real different in the quality of the view be? Also to consider here is that I bought an upgraded eyepiece and barlow for my existing scope. These could be reused with the skymax 127 (since its got a 1.25" focuser) but not with the skymax 150 (2" focuser), so I would probably end up spending even more on additional eyepieces/barlow.
4. Finally, It seems no matter what mount I look at someone always suggests getting the next one bigger!  Given that all of the scopes above are within the capacity of the EQ5, does it really make sense to sacrifice the quality of the telescopes to get a bigger HEQ5 mount?

 

Thanks for reading this long post and I look forward to your advice! Feel free to tell me which option you would choose or suggest additional options. The only caveat is that the £1500 budget is already a stretch, so any options that go much beyond that are not a real option for me at the moment.

Edited November 23, 2020 by jtf_ie

[Tiny Clanger]

I'm seriously under qualified to answer most of your questions in a helpful way, except to mention one small thing : I'm pretty sure I've seen small devices to put in 2" focus tubes to reduce the diameter so you can use 1.25" EPs

[DaveL59]

you can get a reducer to allow the 1.25-inch gear to be used in a 2-inch focuser and not too expensive so no need to get a set of 2-inch eyepieces & diagonal until you really want to.

I'm not an imager but the general feedback here is the mount is the most important first component, on a very solid tripod of course. If that isn't stable then you'll potentially be upgrading it later as you get more into it. I have the older EQ5-synscan and it is fine for my purposes (visual) and as a starter may well be fine to start on the 'tog path but the HEQ's are much better I believe.

In terms of the scopes I can't advise as I've used none. For the Skymax consider the handling as you will be mounting/dismounting regularly. Probably not too difficult being 6-inch compared to some of the large SCT's out there.

[Erling G-P]

Your 3 listed options all have Maksutovs as visual scopes.  With longer focal lengths than you current scope, that suggests that visually you want to move towards lunar / planetary specialization, and perhaps smaller DSOs & double stars.  Is that a correct assumption?

[jtf_ie]

Thanks All,

 

1 hour ago, Erling G-P said:

Your 3 listed options all have Maksutovs as visual scopes.  With longer focal lengths than you current scope, that suggests that visually you want to move towards lunar / planetary specialization, and perhaps smaller DSOs & double stars.  Is that a correct assumption?

Thats a great question and honestly I had to think about the answer, but I guess it is correct. I’ve viewed Andromeda and the Orion + running man nebulae through the explorer 130 and while I’ve been blown away by the experience, it’s mostly by the idea of what I’m looking at rather than the view itself, but seeing the detail on the surface of the moon, the clear bands on Jupiter and the rings of Saturn have been more visually impressive. Plus I think the kids (aged 9, 6 and 3) will get more from seeing that detail, at least initially, than they will from understanding that they are looking at a galaxy millions of light years away. 
Also, I assume if I wanted to look at Andromeda I could always put a eyepiece in the refractor and use that visually also? 

Thanks!  

[KP82]

Personally I'd go with Option 3. HEQ5 is vastly superior to the normal EQ5 for tracking. It is usually recommended as the starting mount for astrophotography.

Don't know much about EQM35. But based on the user experiences from the others, it seems to suffer from some pretty bad backlash in its gears out of the box. If you're going to start without guiding, this mount isn't going to work out well for you.

The SW evostar 80/100/120/150 ED are all FPL53 doublets. So they are optically equal to any other mass produced FPL53 doublets of the same aperture including WO. The 72 is an odd ball here as SW do not disclose the ED glass type. Many speculate it's FPL51 or HFK61. If this is true, then yes the WO ZS73 will be superior but definitely not twice as good.

To use your 1.25" eyepieces in a 2" focuser, you just need a 2-to-1.25 reduction adapter.

Keep in mind both skymax 127 and 150 are Mak-Cass type and they will require longer cool down time than your 130p which is a open tube newt. The fov will also be much narrower.

IMO the performance difference between the HEQ5 and EQ5 out weighs the optical benefit you get from WO ZS73 compared to SW Evo72.

 

Edited November 24, 2020 by KP82

[SmokeyJoe]

+1 for the HEQ5.  The mount is the most important part of your setup, get the best you can, even if it means only buying one scope for now.  Have you considered a Dob for visual, just thinking they are dead easy to use, therefore good for the kids. 

[Erling G-P]

11 hours ago, jtf_ie said:

Thanks All,

 

Thats a great question and honestly I had to think about the answer, but I guess it is correct. I’ve viewed Andromeda and the Orion + running man nebulae through the explorer 130 and while I’ve been blown away by the experience, it’s mostly by the idea of what I’m looking at rather than the view itself, but seeing the detail on the surface of the moon, the clear bands on Jupiter and the rings of Saturn have been more visually impressive. Plus I think the kids (aged 9, 6 and 3) will get more from seeing that detail, at least initially, than they will from understanding that they are looking at a galaxy millions of light years away. 
Also, I assume if I wanted to look at Andromeda I could always put a eyepiece in the refractor and use that visually also? 

Thanks!  

I'm relatively new and almost exclusively imaging, and with reflectors only, but can see no reason why you shouldn't be able to use the refractors for visual too. KP82 appears to confirm that above.

If not for your desire to get closer to Moon & planets, my suggestion would have been a HEQ5Pro & a Sky Watcher 130PDS, using the latter for both imaging & visual.  It's a very capable scope for imaging, as the thread dedicated to this testifies, and I personally find it very suitable for the HEQ5.  With Sky Watcher's 0.9 Coma Corrector, it would still leave you with about £400 for other items - guide scope/cam perhaps. However, with a focal length of 650mm it would be a step in the wrong direction from your current scope.

The 130 PDS is so cheap though, that you could include a Skymax 127 Mak and still be well within your budget.  The 130 has a longer focal length that the refractors you suggest, so won't be quite so widefield. What's best depends on the targets, so impossible to say what's most suitable. The shorter focal lengths should be easier to get started with, but I shouldn't think a 130 PDS is too hard (started with a 200 PDS on HEQ5 myself).  For visual use, the 130 should have a massive light gathering advantage over the smaller refractors, but again what's best would depend on the targets.

[jtf_ie]

Thanks All,

 

Some great points and info here. Its really helped me to think about what I really want.

 

6 hours ago, SmokeyJoe said:

+1 for the HEQ5.  The mount is the most important part of your setup, get the best you can, even if it means only buying one scope for now.  Have you considered a Dob for visual, just thinking they are dead easy to use, therefore good for the kids. 

This has really gotten me thinking about possibly only buying one scope. I hadn't really considered a Dob because one of the reasons I wanted to get the Mak was because of its compact size compared to the newt. And I don't have a huge amount of space and so I wanted to just have one mount to deal with, etc.

However, perhaps a better option for now would actually be to keep my explorer 130 and just buy a dovetail so it can be mounted on the HEQ5. That would allow me to buy the HEQ5 mount with the WO ZS73 (or perhaps the SW Evostar 80ED) for for about my budget.

I could always buy the Mak later when I can afford to add more. 

 

[SmokeyJoe]

Love my 80ed but there are many other scopes out there, I don't have the experience of them to advise you, I'm sure someone will be along soon to do so.   In the meantime if you haven't already download stellarium (I find the desktop version best) it will allow you to see how different targets will look with various combinations of equipment