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Old 02-04-2009, 10:45 PM
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rat156
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Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Melbourne
Posts: 1,696
Hi Simon,

Next things to buy, in order of importance...

1. A good 2x barlow (maybe 3x, if the seeing is reasonable at your site), forget a 4x on the 12" unless you're in the Bahamas.

2. Once you've gotten hooked by the planetary thing (it's Saturn season ATM, closely followed by Jupiter season), you'll want a step up in resolution, so get a monochrome CCD planetary camera, a DMK 21 is perfect as it uses the same chip as the SPC900NC without the bayer matrix on it.

3. Either a fiterwheel and filters (expensive) or a 1.25" flip mirror (this what I use). You whack one camera in either port and flip between colour and monochrome imaging, then combine them later. Some here use the filterwheel and filters, they'll comment on the pros, but you've already got the colour webcam, so you might as well use it.

Mostly remember that collimation is of utmost importance when doing planetary imaging, learn how to collimate the SCT and do it. Probably should have put Bob's knobs at the start of the list, if the scope doesn't have them, consider it first.

Have fun, the first images will be fuzzy, but they'll get better with practice, don't be afraid to ask questions, look at the planetary images in the forum and ask the poster questions, we don't (usually) bite.

Cheers
Stuart
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