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How to spend £1500 on my first scope?


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Hi all, I'm sure this question has been asked a lot on here but I want to purchase my first telescope. I'm prepared to spend £1500 - £2000. Initially I'm interested in observing but want the option of getting into astrophotography too. I need it to be portable enough to go in the back of the car as well. Any thoughts, ideas, suggestion and advice very welcome. I'm as interested in what not to buy (and the reasons) as well as what to buy. Cheers

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Okay, to get into astro photography you need a German Equatorial mount, at least an HEQ5 or 6. You mention getting in the car so you will be a mobile imager? In that case it has to be German Equatorial since fork mounts, which I wouldn't recommend anyway for imaging, are dreadful things to polar align on wedges.

HEQ 5 or 6? The 5 is a lot easier to move around but lacks the load capacity of the bigger one and is less capable in the wind. The choice depends on your scope.

For imaging you absloutely must have a fast f ratio, nothing slower than f7.5 and ideally faster than that. A focal length of below a metre will make guiding easier and nearer 500mm it gets much easier still. The easiest way to get into imaging is with a small refractor but that won't give you much of a view visually. So here are some possible OTAs that will do both;

Skywatcher ED120 or Meade 127 Triplet apo. These are large but budget apo refractors which will give a decent intro to deep sky and fine views of the planets. For imaging they are very competent and painless but not super fast. EQ5 possible but 6 preferred.

Skywatcher do a Maksutov Newtonian of 190mm and f5.3. This is big enough to give bright visual images and has a large flat field and fast f ratio which makes it a great bet for DSLRs which have large chips to cover. I haven't used one but this ticks all the boxes and images on the forum look very good. EQ6 preferred. It is bulky and will catch the wind.

Altair Astro do a fast, f4 imaging Newt of 200mm which I will soon get a chance to test. It looks good on paper and is cheaper than the Mak Newt, even faster, but will need a coma corrector and careful spacing from the corrector to the chip. It won't fill the chip as evenly as the Mak Newt but should give good visual performance.

Skywatcher do some parabolic Newtonians which I gather are good for imaging and visual but I will let others discuss those because I don't know anything about them. Be sure to check their photographic compatibility with a good dealer like FLO.

Or you could put up with limited (but optically very nice) visual performance and go for something like the Skywatcher Equinox 80. This would make imaging easiest of all the scopes I have mentioned but 80mm is not a lot when it comes to hunting down galaxies! It is the only scope in this list which would be entirely at ease on the HEQ5.

Maksutovs are far too slow for deep sky imaging and SCTs have a lot of imaging issues as well. Long focal length, the need for reducers, aftermarket Crayford focusers, mirror shift and more. Don't start imaging with one of these! However, they do suite the mobile visual observer, being of large aperture and short length.

For the skywatcher stuff and maybe the Meade, try FLO. Ian King does the Meade refractor ( I had one of those and reviewd it fo AN last year) and of course Altair Astro do the Altair Astro Newt.

Hope that's enough to start some balls rolling on here!

All the best,

Olly

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Olly, many thanks for a very comprehensive reply. I realise that I'm trying to get an instrument that will be a bit of a 'jack of all trades' so compromises will have to be made but you've given me planty of options to explore. Cheers

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.why don't you spend £1500 on a scope for imaging and the other £500 on a 10" Dobsonian for visual? Then you have the best of both worlds without compromising!

Actually that's a great way of compromising on both.

If your idea of "astrophotography" is deep space imaging then £1500 is a very tight budget. Since you say you have a requirement to chuck the thing in a car, and are presumably a bit of a newbie, you might find an equatorial a bit much. I reckon you'd get best value from a fork mounted SCT ... there are (UK based) sites which have the Celestron CPC 800 on sale NEW at less than £1500 and it's a really good scope, you can have a lot of fun doing lunar & planetary imaging with a good computerized altaz mount like this one.

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Fair point from Brian. I'm afraid I always assume deep sky imaging when I hear astrophotography mentioned. For webcam planetary imaging a poorish polar alignment will do, which lets fork mounts in. I continue to hate them for deep sky imaging!

Olly

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Don't forget that you will need more than a scope for just visual use, you'll want more ep's, maybe a barlow lense, a red light torch, star charts, an observing chair and possibly a collimation tool depending on what scope you go for. So you should budget for all these too.

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Tal - Tal 200K Optical Tube Assembly

cant go wrong with one of these on an EQ6 pro, google one and you will see :)

Well you could go badly wrong with one of those for deep sky imaging since f10 is neither use nor ornament but for other purposes it looks interesting. Thanks for the link because I didn't know about this one. However, the blurb does contain one bit of pure linguistic silliness; ' non-aspheric.' Would a normal person translate this as 'spherical?' Will we start calling aspheric systems non-non aspheric? Who writes this stuff?

Olly

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You are going to find that £1500-200 is easy to spend in this hobby.

Decent scope, good EQ mount with motors and a selection of 4 good eyepieces and it's all gone.

Hell you can get a good 80mm triplet for astrophotography for £1500-£1800 and then start saving for the rest all over again.

I fancy the new WO Meg 120 scope and that is just a doublet and if I recall no diagonal or eyepieces, comes in at just over £1500.

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Wow, loads of responses, many thanks to all. I think I need to have along hard think of which way to go! Why am I getting the feeling this will turn into an expensive hobby!

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As someone that doesn't do astrophotography (yet), as I see it, the main stumbling block may be being able to put the setup into the back of the car?

You do need a good solid heavy duty mount to do the astrophotography. Heavy duty does tend to mean 'heavy'.

So how to go about this in a cost effective manner, while still having that mount stability?

How about a setup like this for starters, with whatever mount the well experienced here recommend the most?

Reflectors - Skywatcher Explorer 150P DS OTA

The priority being acquiring the mount, and the OTA being something to start with, that will do visual as well as photographic.

Then you can keep your eyes peeled for a bargain secondhand ED80 to be the main astrophotography tool (I have seen them go for £150 - £200 quite often).

That 150p DS OTA, could then be used on a mount that is far easier and lighter to manhandle, for putting in the car (even a secondhand one).

I don't know how 'up to it' an EQ5 PRO GOTO might be (or how portable it is for the car, for that matter), but even the most expensive EQ6 would still put you well inside the budget leaving plenty of room for other gear (eyepieces, filters, collimation tool, 12v power supply, etc).

Heck with care you'd still be inside budget if you added a Canon EOS 1000d body and adaptor?

Rack some posts up here, getting the list sorted, then phone FLO (link at top of the page) and see how much an initial purchase would set you back.

Learn your way around with that 150p DS (which if you ever want to move it on, should sell easy here), while keeping your eyes peeled for an ED80, and I don't see how you can go far wrong?

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:mad: Some of us wish we had a similar amount to spend! Having said that, most of us probably do, over a longer period!

From what I've read so far, your first consideration will be the mount. A mount with some means of electronically adjusting it using a guide scope/camera would be preferable if you really want to get into astrophotography (but then again a lot depends on what you might want to image).

An EQ6 is going to set you back approximately £600-900 depending on whether you go for the basic mount or the EQ6 Pro SynScan. Bear in mind, though, the weights according to TELESCOPE SUPPLIERS - SKY-WATCHER TELESCOPE :

Mount: 16Kg

Tripod: 7.5Kg

Weights: 2 x 5.1Kg

All in all, 33.7Kg (111lbs or just under 8st) and that's without an OTA, so perhaps not the best for lugging around!:)

I'd be inclined to start off with a scope that could later be used as a guide scope for astrophotography, and a more manageable mount such as an EQ3-2 or an Alt-Az - something you can (relatively) easily transport. I'm sure others here will be able to better advise on the scope to get.

Take the opportunity (when weather permits) to observe the sky using this scope either in your garden or preferred dark location. Learn your way around and make a note of items of interest for a later date.

That would be "Phase I"

"Phase II" would be to get an EQ6 Pro, preferably pillar mounted in a converted shed/observatory. You'd then get a second scope onto which your first one would be piggy-backed. A guide camera would then be attached to the original scope and used to control the EQ6. I'm not au fait with how this works but I imagine there's either a direct connecting between camera and mount (when the camera's of a type that can issue commands to the scope) or you'd connect camera to PC/laptop and PC to mount, using software on the PC to control the mount.

You may even end up in the situation whereby either scope can be used to guide the other, using one scope for DSOs and the other for planets etc.

Anyway, that's the fourpenn'th of someone who has yet to buy their first scope! :icon_scratch:

Paul

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£1500

Easy - and with Olly 100% on this

Imaging deep sky

ED80/ST80 parallel rig on an ADM or similar parallel mounting bar (or piggyback...either way is fine)

HEQ5 mount

Netbook - £100 ish from laptops direct

GPUSB autoguider cable/interface

Second hand Meade DSI camera (guider...better IMHO than the QHY which I also have!)

Second hand DSLR (EOS350 etc)

Should just come in under budget, and you'll have a system which not only will start you imaging, give you a nice DSLR for family shots, and a pocket computer, but will expand and grow with your needs. The mount is ideal for low to medium weight scopes, and once you decide you want to go bigger easy to resell and get the EQ6

Job sorted!

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Agree with Olly and in fact, Nick has pretty much written up my imaging rig :). The ED80 refractor, will actually work very nicely with practice and the right camera, as a pretty decent lunar scope too.

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Just a word of advice. Get a good book on astrophotography such as "Making every photon count". Read it so you can have an understanding of what you're getting into.

If you have no previous experience with astronomy then going straight for imaging may be a very demanding step. Let's say you need to go to a dark place, that means:

1) Get all the things in the car.

2) travel for 30min or so.

3) setup everything, including polar allignment etc. So just under 30min if you know what you're doing.

4) find your target

5) reach perfect focus on the DSLR (harder then you may think)

6) shoot for a couple of hours

7) pack everything back

8) head home and store the gear when you arive (at this point you probably have to get everything out to let it dry any dew, and them repack the gear the next day when it's dry).

9) after a few sessions spend a night processing the captured data to produce one image (this requires careful study of several software).

If you miss the focus, then the work is lost. If the alignment or tracking are not perfect you loose everything again. You also have to account for the weather that may go from a clear sky to a lot of cloud coverage in less then the time you need for a decent session.

So you are looking into 3 or 4 hours per session, a couple of sessions per target, all backed up by a lot of study of both astronomy gear, astrophotography techniques and processing skills.

When I realized everything involved, I decided I was only going to do visual observation for a while (till I'm retired or something :)).

I'm not trying to put you off, just pointing out whats involved with astro imaging so you can make a conscious decision. When someone fresh into the hobby takes this task on from the start, it usually ends up with a lot of frustration and eventually quiting the hobby all together.

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Just to add a different point of view. I have been an amateur photographer for quite a few years and in my humble opinion astrophotography isn´t all that difficult. Apart from having to learn to do polar alignments and a few other delicate processes that, as pvaz says, if not done with care can send all your work to the garbage can! It is a hassle to load your car and unload and all that. But it is worth it.

For me, the real thing about astronomy is that I know pretty little. Yesterday I read about neutron stars, learning that nobody really knows how matter in them is or how it behaves. Each time I align my mount, I need a star chart because I hardly know any of the their names. If it weren´t for the goto feature I wouldn´t have taken photos of anything at all.

I´ll never forget the first time I set up my mount, all I had was my camera, and no scope. I was stunned :) when I saw my very first photo of M31 on the camera screen (using a 400mm telephoto lens), something that appears to be a fuzzy star to the naked eye.

The beauty of what is in the universe is something that makes one feel worthless, insignificant, and it is definately worth loading the car, going out in the cold, spending hours taking photos, sharing your photos with others, going back when the photos you did last week weren´t any good, an all that.

How can a neutron star be materially so simple (in theory) and us animals so insignificantly small and so molecularly complex?

I shortly will be seeing the universe, not only taking photos. I am finally getting my first scope next week!

And in answer to your question how to spend 1500quid on a scope, I can tell you what I did for about a year in my spare time. I read as much as I could about different telescope types, their properties, pros and cons, in wikipedia, forums and other sources. I got a bit saturated with all that info, but finally chose a model which I am pretty sure is going to be one of the best options for me given my situation.

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I chose a Maksutov Newton, and these are some reasons why I think I did the right thing:

-It's a fast scope (f5.3), necessary for taking photos. I may have prefered an f4, but couldn't really afford it.

-It's a scope good for seeing as well.

-It can be used for daylight nature photography.

-It's a closed tube, that helps keep the dust out. Spain is a dry and dusty country! And where I live it is pretty windy too.

-It is supposed to be a scope specially apropiate for astrophotography. No coma and flat field (I hope).

-Not too large, it fits in the car's boot (or trunk).

-With other peoples opinions and help in this forum, a Mak-newt convinced me most.

Some cons might be:

-Slightly heavier than newtonians.

-Larger than refractors.

-More expensive than newtonians, but cheaper than RCs.

-Mine is black, I think I would have prefered white.

-Not sure the focuser is as good as other brands, maybe I'm wrong.

-Needs collimating every now and then.

That's all I can think of.

If you can save 1500pounds now you can probably save as much in another year or so. I wouldn't try and get everything you need straight away. I'd get a mount first, then an ota, and the rest of the kit as time goes on.

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