Dew Tapes & controllers

[kris h]

What are the best dew tapes & controllers say for celestron c8

[brianb]

The tapes are all much of a muchness. Controllers do vary but it's mostly whether you want a manually controlled unit or a fancy automatic type ... the cheaper ones are just as effective, when adjusted correctly.

[ollypenrice]

I have Orion tapes and no control other than on and off. I don't have any issues with that though I am using refractors.

Olly

[steve_bham]

I have Orion tapes and no control other than on and off. I don't have any issues with that though I am using refractors.

Olly

Would the Orion tapes work well on a small mak?

[brianb]

no control other than on and off. I don't have any issues with that

If you turn on & off fairly rapidly with the correct proportion of "on" to "off" - that's what the controllers do - you don't want to use a rheostat / potentiometer to drop the voltage because you're wasting power that way.

For "wide field" imaging you won't have an issue. But, if you put in significantly more energy than is required to keep the optical surfaces at ambient, the heaters will cause some turbulence which will manifest itself as "tube currents" or "bad seeing" - smearing the view when viewing with high power or imaging at large plate scales.

[Bigwings]

Best price I could find for dewband was a Revelation Pro for 8" at £36.99 post free.

from Stayfocused on ebay I have just purchased for £31.49 the following. Best price I could find for a controller for my SE8 where I need a band for corrector plate and perhaps EP. You need to wait till he invoices you when the postage is free. If you pay by paypal immediately postage is added.

HitecAstro 2 Output Single Channel Dew Controller