New - and in need of some advice

[glennp]

Hi all from outer Sth East Melbourne.
Im new to the hobby.
Ive tried the physical - standing next to the telescope and peering into the eyepiece - but i dont know what i am looking for - or at! And i cant share that with my wife and kids.
I have a Meade ETX125 and a laptop. My goal is to set the scope up on the tripod outside and view the stars on the laptop - and of course drive it from the laptop. I want to use some software to help me point the telescope at things of interest.
I would like to see colour pictures on my laptop, but ultrafine astrophotography is not a goal for me. I just want to see things!
I am looking at buying a Meade DSI 2 to fulfil this goal.
Can I put some questions to you all.
Im told the Meade DSI will do the job - but it is at the higher end of the price market. What other options are there for me?
Ive seen people modifying webcams for the purpose - but when I say I am not that technically skilled, I really mean it. Can I buy a webcam or similar for my purpose already set up ready to screw in?
I also would really like an experienced person to provide some 1 on 1 tutoring for a few hours - are there any locals interested in earning a little money to help me out in this?
Looking forward to your advice.
GP

[ballaratdragons]

Glenn, it appears that the Melbourne folk are a bit busy :sadeyes:

Your best bet is to get along to one of the Astro Club nights down your way and the folk there will help you out.

Alternatively, if you feel like a country drive, bring your gear up here to our Astro Camp and get lots of help: http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=21559

:thumbsup:

[turbo_pascale]

There are a few of us Meade Melbournites who get together sporadically.

Have a look over here on Yahoo, and you can keep an eye out for the next events. There was one on Saturday 20th October, but there's no real rhyme or reason to when we get together.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MelbMeadeScopes/

There are a couple of people who have ETX125's as well, who may be better able to give you specific answers on this equipment. Unfortunately, I have no specific knowledge of this scope or how to hook it up, but if it is anything like most Meade scopes, you need a RJ12 cable (serial cable), and some kind of program to tell it where to point.

Turbo

[Alchemy]

First point you need a planetarium program such as starry night , it comes in several versions even the lower ones will show you the messiers and rotation of the sky with common objects planets etc

Second point ETXs can come with an autostar controller which will goto lots of objects once you do an alignment

you will be limited with what you can see LIVE on your laptop as the pics you see in the deepsky section are often long exposures ... and then lots of them stacked. there are specific video cams such as gstar ex and such,( not a big fan myself) if you are doing some exposures start with shorter times first, alignment will play a big role here , and whether or not its mounted equatorially to track the star movements... most of those type of scopes are ALT AZ (up and down ) and in a long exposure things will rotate.

the focal length of your scope plays a big part for pictures as 400-600 is consdered short and best for beginners and probably 1500 or more is long and more for the experienced

if you can get to a club thats probably your best bet.

in the meantime post all your questions you will get an answer eventually.:welcome:

[iceman]

Hi Glenn, :welcome: to IceInSpace!

As the others have said, best to try and get along to a local club meet or star party. You'll learn much more in a shorter period of time - and make some friends along the way.

[Meadehead]

:welcome: Glenn,

I'm a newbie also, and can tell you first hand the people on this forum are helpful.

To my understanding, astroimaging can be complex and eventually I would like to give this a try but want to take it one step at a time and learn how to use the scope. I also owned an ETX125 but since upgraded to an LX90 which runs the same Autostar software and should guide you to objects once aligned.

Good Luck!

[Karls48]

Hi Glenep. DSI is not very good choice for live viewing. First of all you will not see any colour on your computer screen with any camera. It will take minutes or tens of minutes of exposure before colour of the Deep Sky Object become apparent. So the colour pictures you see on this site are many minutes of exposure stacked. Your scope is F15 and about 1800mm focal length. You will need very sensitive (0.001Lux or better) camera to see anything at all, live on your lap top screen.
Only camera I know of suitable for what you want to do is GStar. Even with this very sensitive camera I would recommend that you get Focal reducer to lower your F ration and to get wider field of view. The image on your screen will update every 2.6 seconds on maximum sensitivity setting.
I got ETX-105 and GStar camera and I use it with Focal reducer. As for computer software I use SkyMap and it works well with ETX.
Other alternative is colour Starlight camera. I got Mintron MTV-62V6H-EX. With this one you will see different colour of stars live (red stars will look kind of red and blue stars will look blue-white). It is similar camera to mono GStar, but not as sensitive and it got many hot pixels (hot pixel will look like star in place where is not one). But even with this one you will not see colour on Deep sky Object live.

[mick pinner]

what suburb are you in Glen?