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Greg
You learn something every day on this website! Didn't know there was a thing called “Gradient Exterminator”. Did some investigation and it brought me to my old problem...how do I get a full copy of Photoshop with out pretending to be a student or paying more than a good RC costs. Damn that software's expensive. I'm just going to have to get used to trying to use freeware like gimp etc because I'm way to stingy to pay a small fortune for photoshop! Back to the problem at hand.
I've looked at the 8300 and although it's around the right price range, it's a reasonably heavy beast at 2lbs. I would be worried if I had that on the end of a barlow and a comma corrector and a filter wheel. Still people do it so it must work.
My thoughts at the moment are to but a QHY8PRO colour (about $2.3K) and a 10”F5 black diamond newtonian (about $550) with a baader coma corrector kit (about $350). That leaves me with roughly $800 that can be used to buy OIII/H-alpha/CLS filters or maybe some 2” powermate barlows. I would probably go 12”F4/F5 but the weight including guider etc would be getting up to the top end for an EQ6PRO. The 10” should give me at least two and a half times more photons than my 6” and I'm familiar with the F ratio. I looked at the RC's from Andrews but an affordable 8” wont give me much of a gain and a 10” is amazingly heavy and out of my range for the moment. A light bucket newt and a good colour camera will probably perk up my interest for a year or two.
Stephen
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