Best scope for backpacking

[HiveIndustries]

So I backpack a lot. I spend almost all my leisure time in Bortle 2-3 playgrounds (and frankly surprised none of the places I frequent are 1s). At least when I was younger and childless

Anyways.. I already have a Skyscanner 100mm and I'm not sure if anyone here backpacks seriously but the idea of taking any part of a telescope is sacrilege and it better be like your sole reason for backpacking. We're a people who literally count squares of toiler paper to save weight. Does anyone here backpack and gaze? I feel like among all of you long time astronomers there has to be people who do this.

The fully assembled scope + dob mount is 2.8kg/6.2 lbs while meanwhile my whole pack weight, including everything (but sans food and water) for a 5 day trip weighs roughly 7kg/15lbs. If you were to carry a .8kg/1.8lb chair for you when you got to camp, there would be conversations about how that chair was a luxury item, to give you a comparison

So that being said, what's the absolute best bang for your buck, lightest, I guess I want to say 4-6" in. on the lighest dob mount possible. (or tell me something different, don't care about AP when backpacking, only visual)

Anyone have any suggestions or experience? Thanks!

[scarp15]

Hi, yes it is possible, but can be a lot of effort, depending upon what you anticipate taking. My passion is backpacking and unlike stargazing, is not nearly so weather dependent, merging the two and my quest to attain the best dark sky became something to relish. 

My backpacking set-up is light weight. For combining with astronomy, I have gone out for a one night rather than multi night trips and of course attempted to go when the forecast is promising over a new moon. Not that this has happened very often with covid and everything, although I look forward to a winter trip.

Regarding kit, the first time and the most practical was to take along my 16x70 binoculars and a monopod. I'd planned to trek a few miles onto a small hill upon the England, Scotland border and to primarily seek summer dark nebulae. The hardest thing about that trip was that I wasn't sure about a water source, if it would be dry and lumbered up quite a quantity of water. On the walk back I ditched my pack, to climb a nearby hill, becoming more than than just about stargazing. The second time I returned to the same location, but a different camp ground and took along my refractor, also with a good flowing water source fairly close by. I took a TV-85, which was just manageable and shouldered a Berlebach Report tripod. Nor did I hold back on eyepieces taking some very chunky low powered, which filtered were used on diffuse nebulae such as the California and Barnard's Loop. Formerly I had owned a TV-76 which would have been a bit more suitable, but the extra light grasp of the 85mm was welcome. The walk in on this trip was just over a couple of miles or so on a rough path so not too hard going. 

For me it makes sense, since I can get to some remote and truly dark skies (I always take a sky quality meter) and slip into the tent afterwards, the trip and location inspired by the potential to go stargazing. With the exception perhaps of the Lunt binoculars, for going as light as possible, everything taken is just my standard kit. I do include a small table - Cascade Wild ultralight folding table and a camping foldable stool. Eyepieces are stored in neoprene camera lens bags.

To sum up a small dob i.e. Skywatcher heritage could be a good option, also a compact rich field refractor and light weight compact tripod or else 11x or 15x70 binoculars / monopod ought be feasible. Would be interesting to hear of your thoughts, how you get on.

Here is a medley of pictures.

 

 

 

 

[HiveIndustries]

Awesome stuff!

I do go kind of crazy with things as you may have seen with my pack weight, that's toting gear for a family of 4 (my wife has a pack though with similar weight) Really it was having children that made me conscious and obsess over UL stuff.

What's the weight on your tripod? Part of me wants to make it a little project, maybe take the Skyscanner apart and re-assemble it as a truss tube and build a dob mount maybe out of carbon fiber dowels. I get a lot of ideas like this and then conclude the amount of time to save .2 kgs isn't worth it lol. Taking these reflector tubes w/ dob mounts though and shedding the weight could be easy enough. I just look at the dob mount with its Formica-clad particle board and think that's got to be about as practical as carrying lead weights.

Frankly I'm not sure how this stuff doesn't already exist to buy, I'd have to think there was some kind of optical scope you could come up with that by minimal swapping out of optics and such you can go from a bird watching telescope to a astronomical one. Like if REI had that kind of device I feel like it would be perpetually sold out. Who doesn't want to look at critters and skies on these trips? Isn't that like one of the huge reasons to do it to begin with?

Forget off the shelf, for me and my wants/needs, I feel like a 4" reflector w/ dob should be able to get down to 1.5kg/3.3lbs. Maybe not easily, it depends on the actual weight of the mirrors and eyepieces though as you can't sacrifice anything there, at all.

I'd create and sell something like that as a product as a side gig, but I feel like it's obviously not an AP setup and has limited niche market. I'd be lucky to sell a dozen.

[Tiny Clanger]

1 hour ago, HiveIndustries said:

Forget off the shelf, for me and my wants/needs, I feel like a 4" reflector w/ dob should be able to get down to 1.5kg/3.3lbs. Maybe not easily, it depends on the actual weight of the mirrors and eyepieces though as you can't sacrifice anything there, at all.

I'd create and sell something like that as a product as a side gig, but I feel like it's obviously not an AP setup and has limited niche market. I'd be lucky to sell a dozen.

Have you considered basing a kit on one of the 5" (130mm) collapsible table top dobs ? Over your side of the Atlantic, what we call the heritage 130 is often badged as a OneSky Newtonian. I have the larger 150mm (6") version, too big for carrying around, but the smaller model might work for you. I believe the 130mm/5" , like the 150mm has a dovetail , so easy to take it off the heavy dob mount and put it on top of a tripod. Loads of choice of photo tripods at all sorts of  prices made for outdoor photographers, it's a huge market compared with astro  ... A carbon fibre tripod would be very light , but very expensive. You could add a small alt/az head, or there are clamps which turn a tripod to camera thread screw to a vixen style clamp .

Interesting, many year long thread on the subject of the AWB 'scope here :

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/463109-onesky-newtonian-astronomers-without-borders/page-216

Heather

Edited October 11, 2021 by Tiny Clanger
130mm=5" not 4". Imperial measures, so last (but one) century

[HiveIndustries]

Well, I'm really talking about fabricating something. I work in video production/post production so I fully understand what a good carbon fiber tripod costs as I've lugged them (which are still plenty heavy btw) through pretty much every major airport in the western world

I like your suggestion as the small one is out of the box way lighter. Off the shelf it may be hard to beat these smaller guys from Celestron and Orion.

This may be something I want to observe my observations over some time and come up with a plan later. For right now maybe just take the Skyscanner on my trips and get laughed at. I always laugh last though with my pack weight and weighing 110 lbs I'm a mountain goat and those laughers don't have wind to laugh when they get to the destination . Spent my entire life being the least physically fit for any physical activity that didn't involve climbing something so, happy to be prideful about being a mountain goat.

"I woke up early to find clouds on 10/11/21" planning so far leads me to believe carbon fiber dowels to replace any kind of support might yield a lb or two reduction.

Part of me wants to go the other way, build the lightest possible structures for like an 8" mirror set or something. If I'm going to be carrying literal extra lbs, might as well make that unavoidable weight the mirrors and minimally build around it. But that gets uber complicated because if you're carrying those kinds of supports around you're really, really going to want to find a way to use that for your shelter or backpack.

tl;dr: I think the answer for the immediate term is to just take these off the shelf small dobs and think about replacing the structural support for tube/mount over time. Convenient that my Skyscanner 100mm already is one of the lightest, so I guess that goes with me on the next trip! (having typed that, omg that mount is so much weight)

Edited October 11, 2021 by HiveIndustries

[Tiny Clanger]

I was thinking the mirror cell /secondary assembly might be good bases around which to construct a truss tube dob , probably simpler and cheaper than doing the calculations and sourcing components individually .

Unless of course you enjoy doing the calculations and sourcing the components !

The mirror is , I think, always going to be the heavy component you cannot get around the mass of.

[HiveIndustries]

You really don't have to get too imaginative to envision a flexible setup. Most high end backpacks amount to a big tube of sturdy but fabric-like material, like there's no reason you can't figure out a way to use that as a shroud (not that this is top of the list) and the primary/secondary mirror mounts could easily be your top/bottom supports. The mirrors you'd want up close to the middle of your back as the heaviest items in your entire arsenal, but also protected from scratches, presumably you'd want some kind of lightweight duvatine for that.

I think bottom line if you could somehow get an 8-12" OTA, I'm guessing it'd have to be a reflector setup (I mean, maybe you could try and get away with some kind of SCT so you can get a wider diameter but not get too tall?). Honestly, I bet you could take a Meade 12" and figure out a way to hollow it out and use that as your pack and protect and reassemble the scope on the other side. Is that possible with an SCT? I understand a lot goes into getting the corrector plate proper.

 

 

...those thought processes leading me to the current conclusion, "Strap on the Skyscanner and just get out there before you complicate this any further"

This is about that kind of emotional/pseudo spiritual personal experience you can share with friends and doesn't have to be the showing nebulae with color. I think the Skyscanner 100mm can do that with a good eyepiece (perhaps a Pentax zoom?). Over-complicating it up front could easily kill that atmosphere before it ever gets to happen.

Edited October 11, 2021 by HiveIndustries

[Tiny Clanger]

Hmm, well, I'm sticking with my little dob as it is 🙂 and I'd not want to lug it around further than my garden, but I did a search to find the sort of weight of newt. mirrors on their own (no support cell etc)  ... 200mm comes in at 1.4kg , 300mm is 5.6kg ...

https://www.orionoptics.co.uk/product-category/optics/telescope-mirrors/

[Adam J]

Maybe a skymax 90? Put it on a AZGTI mount. 

[Merlin]

A small spottingscope, ranging from  65 to 80mm aperture, is recommended by some for lightweight portability.

[Andrew_B]

3 hours ago, Tiny Clanger said:

Hmm, well, I'm sticking with my little dob as it is 🙂 and I'd not want to lug it around further than my garden, but I did a search to find the sort of weight of newt. mirrors on their own (no support cell etc)  ... 200mm comes in at 1.4kg , 300mm is 5.6kg ...

https://www.orionoptics.co.uk/product-category/optics/telescope-mirrors/

I know you can get lightweight mirrors with honeycomb structures for some scopes but I wonder if anyone makes them for use in Newtonians? I'm sure the answer is yes, if you have the budget for a custom optic but I can't say I've seen them advertised as off the shelf products.

[scarp15]

Perhaps you could draw inspiration from Mel Bartels highly specialised 6" F2.8 as a template for a project. Here is an image and a link.

https://www.bbastrodesigns.com/Herschels Ghosts.html

 

 

[Nyctimene]

Some more ideas here:

http://www.roelblog.nl/2019/09/summierian-ii-een-100mm-f-4-babydobson/#more-2809

Stephan

[Mognet]

Pete @astrolunartick has made several lightweight scopes for backpacking that show what can be achieved