Quote:
Originally Posted by Outcast
Hi Truss & welcome to the forum;
I can't speak directly to the Celestron SE series but, a mate of mine uses a 7.5AH battery to power his LX90 8" and gets a full night viewing out of that.
I myself use a 24AH SLA for my LX90 but, only because I already had one lying around & also because I use it for my EQ mount & AP setup.
I generally find the LX90 Az/Alt not very power hungry vice the EQ / AP rig which sucks power like it's going out of fashion.
Regarding AP, I highly recommend a bhatinov mask to ensure that you have really sharp focus; these can be found on e-bay for as little as $16. Have a look for the e-bay handle 'I_like_vegemite', that is who I purchased mine from & he will design one for you if he doesn't have an exact match.. I have no idea who he is but, he is in Melb & his products are really good.
For planetary work, use video.. this allows you to capture thousands of frames over a short period of time; stack the video in Autostakkert, sharpen in Registax & final tweak in digital photo processing software of your choice...
I considered a wedge for my LX90 (both commercial & home made), in the end I bought an EQ mount & separate scope & do my deep sky that way instead. I understand though that there are plenty of people out there getting great results of a wedge....
Eyepieces, depends on what you want to do.. I have no experience with the Saxon range you mention but, I have Meade UWA's for widefield (a whole 1.3 degree FOV max in the LX90) & KK Fujiyama Orthos for planetary. I also have a full set of Meade plossls that came with the scope when I purchased it second hand; the plossls are fine, the others are better but, the plossls are fine...
Can't speak for your red dot finder but, I use a Bintel one which is quite robust however, that said, if the one you have is working fine I wouldn't bother changing it until it breaks.... It only has one job really, helping you get that fat 8" tube onto alignment stars... after that, if you have been exact in your alignment stars the goto should handle the rest...
I'm sure others will chime in with ideas for you as well but, hopefully, this helps...
Cheers
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Thanks for the detailed response Carlton.
Why I didn't consider a small SLA battery is beyond me, not only because they will do the job, but because I can get them at cost price (12Ah SLA for $20). What I found was that the mount itself wasn't power hungry per se, but the little Li-ion battery pack wasn't able to deliver 2A, let alone the advertised 3.5A. The mount appeared to slew correctly and the hand controller was behaving itself, but the alignment was way off, indicating a power shortfall.
I've got a Bahtinov mask lying around somewhere, I don't even know how I came to own one haha. The only problem is that it's for a Meade 4500 Newtonian (epic POS). I'll have to have a chat to my CNC guy and see if he can whip one up to suit the Celestron. If not, they aren't expensive as you've mentioned.
I didn't even consider video, my Canon 7D does a fantastic job with 1080p video. I might give it a shot the next time around.
The red dot finder when aligned is fine, however it is flimsy and the adjustment knobs and mechanism aren't smooth in operation. I've been on the Bintel site and there are a couple of nice looking finderscope options for reasonable coin.
The good Plossl pieces are fine, it's the shorter focal length ones that have very poor eye relief. I was curious about the Saxon pieces because I've read that they are a Saxon branded version of the Celestron X-Cel.
Considering I used to drive a Meade LX200 (12") way back in the day, I think I'm doing okay re-acclimatising to the SCT family.