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Old 12-01-2008, 05:34 PM
Cluster
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Location: Adelaide, Australia
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Newbie - GSO 6" EQ, Nikon D70

Hi everyone,

After many weeks of looking through forums and websites I finally have purchased my first telescope. Thanks for the price drop, Andrews Comm. :-) It's a 6" Guan Sheng, Skyview I mount, 3x ED barlow and RA motor drive. (not quite my first scope, as that honour belonged to a Tasco 2" 20 years ago. Horrid, horrid little thing!).

I have a Nikon D70 DSLR and would like to try imaging the planets. I understand that I need a T-ring for my Nikon, but I can't decide between an adjustable tube camera adapter and a camera projection lens. Which works better with the D70's small CCD sensor?

The scope is F5 and I have read on this form that some users needed to move the mirror to achieve focus. I would really like to avoid that

I have an 18-70mm zoom lens for my D70 (which I assume I won't use for astrophotography).

I have browsed this forum for answers but inevitably this post will duplicate already answered questions. I apoligise in advance :-)
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  #2  
Old 16-01-2008, 12:47 PM
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rogerco (Roger)
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I have a D70s but on an 80mm refractor. I didn't have much luck with the image projection eye piece. Try prime focus to start with. You may have problems with focusing requiring moving the mirror which appears to be a problem with reflectors but I can't comment.

Roger
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Old 16-01-2008, 01:10 PM
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iceman (Mike)
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Hi Cluster, to IceInspace!

You may be lucky getting the Nikon to focus at prime focus, but you won't know until you try it. Of course afocal (shooting through an eyepiece, with the lens on the camera) is an option, but won't give you the results you're after for deep-space imaging.

What did you primarily want to photograph? (moon/planets/dso's)

The techniques and equipment needed can be quite different for the different types, and various amounts of money need to be sunk into it no matter which you choose

It's a long slippery slope, I hope you're ready for it!
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Old 17-01-2008, 12:42 PM
Cluster
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Hi, thanks for the welcome.

My 6" GSO arrived yesterday. I spent a couple of hours setting it up last night. I didn't realise just how big this thing is :-) The telescope and mount seem very well constructed and Andrews Comm. included more eyepieces than I expected. The instruction manual is beyond useless (GSO didn't even use a spell checker (ie. tesescope). It's very difficult to understand in parts and the EQ mount set up instructions miss a lot of crucial steps. I ended up referencing a Celestron instruction manual PDF off their website :-) Collimation was reasonably good but still off (no wonder, after a truck trip from Sydney to Adelaide).

I have never collimated a reflector before and some of the instruction pages on the internet go into mind blowing detail. Everyone seems to rave about laser collimators so I ordered one from Andrew's today. Hopefully it will make the job much easier.

Iceman is right about telescopes and astrophotography in general being a slippery slope in terms of money :-) I've already spent more on accessories than the telescope and mount. Trying astrophotography will wait for a week or so until everything is set up.

I tried out my telescope last night but Mars seemed to have a lot of chromatic aberration around it and a large dim star pattern (about a dozen points). Proper collimation will no doubt help there.

Last night was unusually windy in Adelaide and there's a forecast for rain and thunderstorms over the weekend. We need the rain, but the timing is a little unfortunate :-)
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