A month ago I bought a replacement for the TSA102. I spent over a year looking around for the new scope that I wanted. I looked at scopes with much larger aperture and with faster ratios, but in the end I went with a reliable performer; a Takahashi FSQ. It gives a slightly wider field of view from the TSA with a reducer on and is certainly a little faster photographically.
I thought I would start with Corona Australis first. I will need to take some shorter subs to control the globular cluster. This image is 270 minutes in Lum.
Nice work Paul. Are you thinking of getting a reducer for it too?
I have one Rob, but I cannot use a rotator with the reducer in place. If I could use a reducer I would have a similar field of view to that of an FSQ with an STXL11002. unfortunately the back focus on the reducer is only 78mm which does not leave enough room for a rotator. If I don't have a rotator if makes it difficult for remote imaging. Not impossible, but difficult. It limits what sort of composition you will have to any one object. I often at present just take a single shot and then rotate the camera to get the composition I like. If I could get a narrower one than the Optec 2" one I have I would buy one for sure.
The metal backfocus of standard reducer is 72.2mm and remember to calculate the extra coming form a filters tickness.
An exposure of 30min with 8300 is a light bomb ... you need a superdark sky to avoid gradient.. but probably you have this.
Again congrats Paul...
All the best,
Leo
Thanks for the correction Leonardo regarding the metal back distance. My filters give me another mm to work with. That said for now I am not going to be buying the CAA and a Takometer.
1 hour out of Adelaide generally is a quite dark sky. So 30 minute subs are ok. Most nights we get around 21.6 on an SQM. There is some slight light pollution to the north west of my position but I don't image in that area much.
Far out i don't see how the TAKometer should cost that much! A stepper motor, mount, belt and and someone who can write you some code for an arduino is all you would need.
