Robotising a telescope.

[wayland]

Hi. due to poor eyesight I would like to view images via my PC. This would need me to be able to operate my scope remotely and from a distance. The web cams seem straightforward enough, its the rest of drives being automated that I need some opinions please. I have not yet purchased a scope and quite fancy a Catadioptric of some type. A LX90 takes my fancy but can they be completely automated?

cheers

Wayland.

[Merlin66]

A DMK camera from Imaging Source is an "industrial strength" webcam with long exposure capabilities..so if you want remote viewing it may be well worth considering...

The Lx200 is a better bet than the Lx90 IMHO.

But the focal length really means its used for lunar/ planetary and small deep sky objects ie clusters and galaxies.

A second scope like an ED80 is a good compromise for the wider fields need with the larger nebulae Orion Nebula, Plieadies etc

Just my 2c

[wayland]

Thanks for that. I will look into the DMK web cam <excuse the pun>. Its a bit of a can of worms at the moment with so many scopes available. So its good to get the opinions of others. The reason I was looking at a CAT was mainly because of space to swing it. This is now not so much of a problem. Looking at all the kit that you lads have I think that I had better get a good base scope to start with, and then deal with its limitations with other scopes at a later date.

Cheers.

[malc-c]

Hi Wayland,

I'm no expert, but here is my 2p worth...

For a fully automated scope you'll need something like the EQ-5 (minimum), HEQ5 (ideal) or EQ6 (better still) from Skywatcher if you go down the German EQ mount way (or the equivalent from Celestron / Mead). Most of these have the option of connecting the mount to a computer which can then control the scope from a planetarium program or something like EQMOD.

The choice of camera is going to be critical depending on what you want to observe. Something like a converted webcam will be fine for moon and planets, but if you want to observe fainter objects visually as if at the eyepiece then that will be expensive. If on the other hand you want to process the images then this cost could be reduced somewhat.

Hope that helps