I did some images with my celestron cpc925, and it's terrible(alt-az seems only work if the exposure under 5 sec ).
So I start to searching information about scope and a eq mount. My time with the scope will be very limited since my first kid just born, so I passed reflector because the weight/collimation/size may requires more time before I can actually start shooting. I locked my target on 80~100mm APO refractor then.
The Sky-Watcher Esprit 100 looks very attractive to me, It includes field flattener/ring/finder/hard case, etc. but I'm a little worried about the quality control of SW, I found a guy post a thread(forgot where exactly, should be in US) said that he had a esprit 80 with bad collimation and ended up exchange a new one from SW, the whole process took him around 3 months. I also didn't find anyone showed an images from this scope, the review of the scope is very limited as well.
My second option is TAKAHASHI FSQ-85edx(I remember fsq 85edx won't need field flattener because of its design, not sure if I'm right), which is kind expensive for me atm, but at least I dont have to worry about the quality and performance of it.
If anyone had the experience of either optics, could you please share with me : ) If the SW Esprit 100 F5.5 performance excellent, I would be very happy to grab the pack with 3k compare to TAK fsq 85 f5.3 cost 4k for optic only. But if the sw 100 performance just OK or bad for its price. I'd rather spend 4k on TAK safely.
For the mount that can carry a 80~100mm refractor tracking accurately and light weight，I called bintel for help. They suggest me SW HEQ5 pro goto and Losmandy GM8 S（price is 3k
, and I found it $1940 on
telescopes-astronomy.com.au, Not sure why they set such high price for this mount, stuffs in Bintel normally are the same or $100~300 more than other store, but not $1000 more).
I'm going to pass the HEQ5 mount anyways, SW kind of scare me tho.I leave myself Losmandy GM8S and Ioptron ieq 30 to choose. The reputation of losmandy seems not bad, and I saw people got amazing image with ieq 30. I didn't do much research on other mount brand,some are either too expensive or too heavy.But if anyone got any good light mount cost $2500 or less with nice accuracy,I'd be very happy to learn : )
At the end, thanks for anyone take time to read my long thread, and please leave what you think of the optics and mount I mentioned above will be better for imaging. You are also welcome to share your experience with any other optics and mount, I don't have the time to do all the researches on all the brands, so your experience will save me a lot of time and be very helpful.
Happy new year!
