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Old 13-02-2012, 08:30 PM
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alistairsam
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Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Box Hill North, Vic
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The cats eye tools are supposed to be amongst the best, but they are a bit expensive, atleast for me.
I'm not sure about the others though. What I've read about are the barlowed laser or the cheshire, but best wait for someone else to comment or search through this forum as I haven't tried any of these.
You could always start with the simple laser collimator and see if you need other tools.

Have you accounted for the coma corrector and the spacer?
A Guidescope and guidecam are also essential but you could get them later on and get started with learning the process first.
If you image from dark skies and your polar alignment is good, you could get away with 1 min subs without guiding as you should get good results with the F4 and 1 min subs. also depends on the target of course.

it'll be worth your while if you some spend time drift aligning or learning to drift align. but don't get stuck at it.
heaps of tutorials here, but concept is simple, point at a meridian/equator star and adjust azimuth for N/S drift, aim for a star in the East and adjust elevation for N/S drift. Both cases, ignore E/W drift.

Backyard EOS is a good software to use with canon DSLR's and has a drift alignment feature as well as a focusing and several other neat features like naming your images.

if you find stars are still trailing, you might have to go in for the guidescope and guidecamera. the mini guider package looks like good value, and quite a few folks here have it.
that should complete your setup and keep you imaging for a good while.
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