best scope for the tropics

[Ondeck]

Hi everyone

I am moving to KL, Malaysia in a couple of months and wonder what the best scope would be for a high humid environment?

Max up to 6", goto capabaility, CCD

Any pointers?

thanks

Carl

[dannat]

Sct/Mak prob dew the easiest, refractors with. Long dew shield the least.
It orob comes down o dew prevention using heaters & taking care things are dry when thy are capped.
If it were me I'd get a refractor but I'm biased toward them, a newt should be fine if you look after it
Do you have a size as in bulk limitation, ie will you live in apartment

[Ondeck]

it would be in a semi detached house or bungalow. Light pollution will be shocking so it would be a drive out of the city i guess, meaning portability and ease would be key. I am thinking it's just not going to be practicable, maybe a small schmidt cassegrain would be the go to, less $$ and easy to use, so may get more viewing time through the scope.

[gregbradley]

High humidity environment would be similar to those in Florida. They just use dew heaters. I don't think the choice of scope is too much affected other than needing dew heaters.

You'd need to be more specific in your needs of the scope. Visual or imaging? What type of CCD, a small chipped (like up to ST8300 size or a large chipped one (like STL11 or 16803 chipped cameras)?

What sort of imaging, widefield, medium or closeups?

Do you want something that is good for both imaging and visual?

Otherwise the question is too broad to answer.

Broadly: APOs, Newts, CDKs, Riccardi Honders amoung others are good for imaging. Widefield scopes are not ideal for visual as they can't give decent close up views.

Price goes up enormously as you get larger. A decent 6 inch APO scope is around $10,000 or so.

SCTs are good for visual not so good for imaging. The newer Celestron HD and Meade ACF scopes are a compromise between visual and imaging but harder to use as they are long focal length and also limited to "smaller" chips (still very good).

Imaging is more about the mount then optics then camera a close 3rd.

You can't get good images on a bad mount no matter how good your scope and camera is. You can get good images with modest cameras and optics on a high quality mount.

The first target in imaging is to achieve round stars in a 10minute exposure. Sounds easy doesn't it? Its not.

Greg.

[Ondeck]

thanks

All food for thought there. This is going to be for more casual observing so nothing high end. That could come later, are dew heaters available for all scopes? I was thinking a faster scope may be better than a F10 schmidt cass