Quote:
Originally Posted by Cp75
Looking to downgrade from my 9.25 EdgeHD to something cheaper.
Tried Astrophotography awhile back and found I enjoyed just gazing through the eyepiece more.
I though one of the Skywatcher refractors might be ok for just stargazing.
Black Diamond 150 maybe?
Any thoughts?
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If visual only, a 6 or 8SE with StarSense or similar may be the go. I have the 6SE with Starsense & GPS. I can carry the whole thing assembled outside (as it isn't that heavy). Just plonk it down (unlevel and any direction as its AltAz) and power up from the Kogan Li battery pack attached to the acc tray. Go inside and get my chair and EP case and by the time I've done that the things done its alignment and I start visual. The OTA uses a vixen dovetail so sometimes I put my ED80 onto it instead of the 6" SCT. Very fast setup, quite portable (I have back problems and I manage it fine).
Occasionally I put my camping table out there too and throw the EOS tethered to a laptop on it and use AstroToaster to live stack and derotate and within a minute I am looking at the colored image building on the fly in front of my eyes. I use a table of max exp times for diff part of the sky in Alt Az to figure the exp times for each frame.
So kinda got almost the best of all worlds ... quick visual or colored and pretty darn quick images. Multi focal lengths/FOV. Barlows or 0.63 reducer if I need them. Bought most stuff 2nd hand. Sell your Edge and it would more than pay for all the stuff.