New setup for astrophotography for beginners

[Elp]

2 hours ago, woldsman said:

worst scope I’ve used

It's a shame. My Z61 I would say is the perfect compact scope, nothing wrong with it at all and it was also bought used. I would also second your questioning of a seller, a decent person will speak with passion about their item, any issues they've had and tried to resolve etc.

[woldsman]

1 hour ago, Elp said:

It's a shame. My Z61 I would say is the perfect compact scope, nothing wrong with it at all and it was also bought used. I would also second your questioning of a seller, a decent person will speak with passion about their item, any issues they've had and tried to resolve etc.

An additional note on the Zenithstar 70. There seemed to be a design issue resulting in misalignment between the tube and the focusser affecting some  units, including the one I had.  Maybe production of the scope was  discontinued for this reason although there never was a recall so I can't say for sure.  I can say that Rother Valley Optics couldn't fix the collimation despite having the scope for a week.  The seller to me didn't disclose the issue. Basically the scope was useless for imaging beyond maybe guiding.  So not a happy experience.  

 

 

[edarter]

Just to add to the mix:

1 if you are going for a wider field setup as some here have suggested you may not need the guide scope and camera straight away (going back to the comments about building up your knowledge in stages). That would allow a few ££ to spend in a different area such as the post processing software or towards a better mount (which in turn would need less guiding input etc etc).

2 Don't rule out a newt such as the 130PDS, sure you need to collimate and its improved with a few mods, but it does work out of the box. None of the mods are beyond the capability of most people and its certainly not necessary to get you started.

Just a thought.