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Okay So, if you are wanting to use the newt for astrophotography, there are a few things you need to do.
First of all and its my bane, my pet hate. Lasers for astrophotography and newts get you about 70% collimated. decent images start forming on your chip set at about 98%.... Sell the laser my friend because for the same amount you purchased the laser you can buy the right tools that will take you the whole way for collimation. I have no links nor any spin offs but cats eye collimation tools (there are a set of three) Autocollimator, Sight tube and collimated cheshire are the best for the job.
Don't get me wrong lasers may have their place somewhere in somebodys mind but they are a poor substitute for the right tools.
Saxon is skywatchers slightly poorer brother and as such there are things that you should do.
First of all the primary mirror cell needs modifications. Head down to bunnings and get yourself 3 new springs all up it will set you back 15 dollars. While your there get some Neutral cure silicone.
Pull the Primary cell off (6 screws around the cercumfrence), split the primary mirror from the main body of the cell. Take off all the mirror clips and pull the primary mirror out of its immediate cell. place 3 dobs about the size of a 5c piece when squished out of the silicone you just purchased just to the outer side of the cork pads the primary mirror rests on. just for a bit of safety near the middle do the same. Now the mirror clips can be totally left off (better resolution Zero possibility of astigmatisim, past experience).
Now when putting the cell back to gether, give the original springs to a kid to play with, they may be usefull enough for that because they sure as hell aren't usefull for what they are ment for. Put your new springs in. and put everything back together.
This will raise your mirror up the tube slightly.
Now to the top end. The secondary mirror if I am not mistaken will be 58mm (minor axis) which is fine for visual use but useless for photography. Your fully illuminated circle (FIC) is so small you will be down around the 80% light loss by the edge of a KAF 8300 chip set which is an extremely popular chip for cameras at the moment.
for around 50 dollars you can have a GSO 70mm secondary mirror. this brings your fully illuminated circle to approximately 25-30mm depending on your back focus requirements.
Focuser.... although your standard 2" craford works its pretty bung holioed! you will start getting issues with vingnetting even with a KAF8300 chipset because the light cone starts clipping on the focuser tube. Minimum size you should be looking at is a 2.5" and if you can afford it a 3" focuser. Moonlight seem to have a decent priced setup and the top of the line is Feather Touch and FLI focusers. Both FT and FLI have some really nice positives.
lastly try thinking about off axis guiding (OAG). With the OTA itself being thin steel quite often the tube flexes considerably. I was always fighting tube flex untill i moved to OAG, as soon as that happend, pin point stars and good data started happening.
Hope that gives you a bit of a guide as to where to look. once again though loose the laser, proper tools don't require star testing for newts...
Brendan
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