Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian Robinson
Don't bother with a big telescope .... get a good equatorial mount with an autoguider interface and a secondhand 300mm f2.8 lens to go onto your camera , a TC80n3 timer cable (what ever is the equiv for your camera), and maybe a small refractor to be your guidescope.
You don't need to spend thousands on the 300mm f2.8 , ie I picked up a Tamron Adapt2all LD SP 300mm f2.8 for under $1000 on Ebay.
It has a very useful and capable apeture of 107mm (just over 4 inches) and quite a wide and distortion free field on the 40D I'm using.
The mount , a Celestron CG5-AST will do the trick with such a light setup.
You'll be more likely to pick up NEOs in widefield imaging patrols IMO.
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I have the sudden urge to scan the night sky for NEO's and I have been wanting to do this for years.
I know linux and windows, currently using stellerium, wanted a setup i can control from my laptop and record real time and take captures out of that if i wanted later.
post up what i get to the web help the community as well as research.
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I was going to get a celestron or Orion but i was looking at a 15k ..sheesh.. im broke..