Piggybacking refractor

[coldspace]

Hi everyone,

I was looking at getting a nice Apo or semi Apo ED type to piggyback on top of my 12 inch LX200 for wide field use. What would you recommend as being the largest to use that the LX can handle. Maybe only 80 or 100mm but the 127 Apo everyone is talking about for about a grand looks very good value but would this be to big and probally too long as well.
I use a 2 dimensional counter weight set and alt/az mode as I use a video system for imaging. Thoughts on this would be great.Would the orion 80mm Eon be a good choice at the F6.25 ?

Cheers

Matt.

[marki]

G'day

I have a series 5000 80mm apo on mine which does a great job for wide field and the mount does not feel it at all (I also use 2D weight system). I would imagine a 100mm would be ok but the 127mm would probably cause some problems as you would have to add extra weights to get the balance right. It could also be fun if the scope was long as you would have bits poking out all over the place. The 80 is about the same length as the tube with the focuser wound right in but is about 4 inches longer when wound right out which happens to be the sweet spot for most camera's I have attached at prime focus.

[coldspace]

Thanks Marki for your response,

I will look at piggybacking an Orion 80mm F6.25 ontop for widefield viewing with the Mallincam. I thought the 100mm would get a bit on the heavier side as well. I got about 12 nice replies on the cloudy nights site regarding my question. they are a very helpfull bunch over there as well. Thanks for your feed back.

Matt.