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Old 28-10-2013, 07:54 AM
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rat156
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Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Melbourne
Posts: 1,696
Hi Danny,

It depends on what type of astrophotography you want to pursue.

For purely planetary, then the mount doesn't matter, what you want is light gathering ability of your scope and a good sensitive camera. If, on the other hand, you want to go after faint fuzzies, then the vast majority of you dough should be spent on your mount, this doesn't preclude doing planetary as well, but you will have spent a lot on your mount...

Any particular reason you want to shoot at 2m? The longer the FL, the harder it is to get everything perfect, which means a permanent setup for most people. There are several fine imaging scopes that are about 1m in FL (which, BTW will match the pixel size of your camera better), coupled to a good mount, these make a good basis for AP without too much trouble setting up. Cameras are another barrel of monkeys, OSC vs LRGB, DSLR vs cooled CCD, again it depends on your personal preferences. Personally I'd go cooled CCD, LRGB with OAG, an AO unit can also be great.

So for $8k, a Losmandy G11 or EQ8 (I've not been following the EQ8 thread here, so go to that for advice) or similar mount, secondhand G11s come up from time to time and should be about $3k, good luck getting a secondhand EQ8, they're new (just checked the classifieds, there's one there). A nice 1000mm FL refractor would be good, but bang for buck an imaging newt and corrector is the way to image at 1000mm, then whatever is left over on the camera. DSLR and OAG can work well, as long as you're not too far into the city light pollution.

Cheers
Stuart
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