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Originally Posted by UBoat
Excellent and encouraging post. I'm doing something similar but for back packing and public transport so your post was very informative. Couple of questions i) How long does the battery on the A7 last and would you think the A7 was a better option than a colour CCD astro camera such as the Atik Ultrastar which has very low power consumption? ii) I looked at portable mounts and it came to a choice between the Smart EQ and the Adventurer. They bot look good the Adventurer because it is well represented in Australia and the Smart Eq has a chequered history but can guide in DEC and has Go To. wondered if you had considered the Smart EQ and your thoughts on it?
Thanks for your terrific post and blog
PeterO
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Thanks Peter!
I hadn't considered the Smart EQ mainly because when I got the Star Adventurer it was a bit of an impulse buy (I saw it in Bintel and thought "why not..."
), plus I initially only planned to use it with a camera and lens and not with a scope.
I think if your polar alignment is good you shouldn't really need to guide in DEC anyway, but the Smart EQ does look pretty good on paper.
It's hard to compare the A7s to the Atik Ultrastar as they're so different. Without having used one, though I did own an Atik 314L+, I would say the Ultrastar will give better images than the A7s due to its much higher dynamic range - though they will obviously be a lower pixel resolution and FOV than the A7s. I've never used an uncooled CCD so I'm not sure how heat will affect it, or how that compares to the A7s.
Also you would have to run the Atik from a laptop, which isn't a big deal if you're guiding anyway but I was hoping to do most of my imaging with this setup unguided, just using the laptop and guidescope to polar align and then turning them off.
The A7s battery lasted about 4-5 hours when imaging.
What scope/lens were you thinking of putting on the mount?
Do you have a camera already of are you thinking you'll buy one just for this setup?