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Old 05-10-2019, 01:10 AM
RyanJones
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RyanJones is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2018
Location: Melbourne,Australia
Posts: 1,439
Hi Peter,

Sadly there isn’t a perfect scope for deep space AND planets although some do both pretty well. The challenge is the mount and I think most will agree it’s where most of your money should go if you’re pursuing astrophotography. Given that AP is an addiction for most of us, it’s worth setting yourself up for further upgrades early on. The star adventurer is not a bad mount but it really suffers from lack of payload capacity and it’s tracking smoothness isn’t fantastic for AP applications however it can be quite serviceable with short focal lengths. Unfortunately without going down the avenue of eyepiece projection photography, this really isn’t going to feed your Planetary thirst. Another option is to get a small SCT or MAK. You can use it for planetary but the long focal lengths on that mount are going to be no good for deep space objects.

My advice to you would be to extend your budget by a couple of hundred and pic up a HEQ5 pro second hand and either a small doublet refractor or Newtonian. There’s plenty that come and go in the classifieds here. Once you’ve got a taste for it, at least you’ll have some room to grow.

Remember the whole reason you’re asking this is because you want more than the camera and lens that you already have, that want for more doesn’t stop lol !

Good luck with which ever direction you decide to go
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