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A Celestron C90. I originally bought it for terrestrial photography but at f11 the only pictures I could get were grainy using fast film. Since I already had a few larger scopes it was too small for astronomy visual use and again too slow at f11 for astrophotography. It just didn't fit any criteria. There's nothing wrong with it. But whatever it can do another scope can do better.
Then there's the 2 biggest booboos - a $1300 surveillance video camera and a $1000 camcorder. The surveillance video camera was an attempt at video astronomy. This was in 1993 and the camera is rated at 0.03 lux. Was the best technology could do at the time, only now it can be done for less than $100!
The camcorder I bought because of it's low light colour mode using slow shutter. I didn't realise a few days later that in that mode it's resolution was pathetic. Add to that many hot and dead pixels using slow shutter mode. Still I perservered and took some nice shots of the planets on SVHSC tape. Then the camera blew up just out of warranty leaving me with no way of playing all the super tapes! Not to mention all the daylight video I have now that's useless. I'm still bitter about that rotten thing.
At least now I have a Mintron video camera that does a fair job and isn't that expensive. Plus I bought a cheap Samsung video camera on sale at Kmart for 1/4 of the price of the other piece of #%$@& and it works great. Thanks JVC may you rot in the hot place.
My motto now is to buy cheap equipment cos all the expensive stuff blows up on me!
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