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OK! What do you buy next??
Ok! What do you buy next??
You decide enough's enough with your modded/hacked up 6 inch F5 scope. It's time to move up a notch and get a serious scope and camera to take pictures of the heavens. Thinking about all the fun and hassles so far you begin to realise some hard facts.
1/ Your stuck doing astrophotography from a heavily light polluted backyard due to health issues and the level of pollution is about 6-7.
2/ Any camera bought would have to have very low thermal noise as there's no point burying what few photons you get in thermal noise.
3/ You really want to specialise in getting some reasonable pictures of all the DSOs you can find.
4/ You wouldn't mind some trophy pictures of the planets but not at the expense of DSOs.
5/ Wide angle/ low F ratio is out due to the light pollution.
6/ Conditions seem to suggest something over 9 Inches and an F ratio above 6-7 which seems to rule out all the F4-5 things on the market.
7/ You don't mind a little electronic/mechanical work and are prepared to build your own focuser motor drives etc.
8/ You want to keep the camera/scope weight below about 18-19kg to allow for guider bits and pieces.
9/ You want a black and white camera that is more than a Toucam and maybe less than 10 megapixels. Perhaps 2-8 megapixels.
So you look through your box of junk for bits and pieces that might be useful and find
Mount NEQ6PRO with both wide and narrow heads
ADM side by side mount plus 75mm rings
Newt 6 inch/F5 (possible guider)
Newt 4 inch/F8 (possible guider)
Reflector 60mm tasco (possible guider)
Toucams 2 x Lx b/w, 1 x Lx colour, 2 x colour, 1 x b/w (they're like rabbits)
USBnStep drives x2
Barlows (1.25).. Powermate X5, GSO X2.5, GSO X5
Reducer (1.25).. GSO 0.5X plus 1' extender
Extenders (1.25).. 1, 1.5, 2
Extenders (2)..1, 2 (bought by accident!!)
Filter wheel + filters RGB (1.25)
Reverse T adapter
Digikit 49mm adapter
Zoom lens (1.25) 8-24
Plossies various
Motor focuser drives ...various
You figure you'll probably need fancy filters, expensive colour filters, maybe an electronic filter wheel so you set the budget at $4000.
What do you buy???
Stephen
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