Newt Guide Scope?

[TechnoViking (James)]

Hi Guys,
I have a 114EQ Newt that is gathering dust, i was looking at it wondering if i could use it as a guide scope for my 925 CGEM.

Is this possible? Has it been done before?

sorry for the weird question, i just cant stand things being wasted or left unused.

Thanks in advance

[brian nordstrom (As avatar)]

Hi James and mate . The 114mm Newts are 900mm focal length I think and the tube is around 140mm ? those 2 numbers make it hard to use this OTA as a guide scope , eg. smallish field of view and large diameter tube ( hard to find guide rings about 150mm in diameter ) , not to mention these are quite heavy and your mount might protest a bit .
But hey if you have the means give it a try , 'nothing ventured , nothing gained' , as they say .
please keep us informed as to this adventure if you decide to go ahead with it , Good luck ..
Brian.

[LewisM]

I thought using my ED80 as guidescope was overkill.... (it kinda was - went back to using Orion's miniguidescope, and it works BETTER, and FAR less weight.)

[vaztr (Andrew)]

James,

Sell it on the ice classies and get yourself another eyepiece or 3!!

VAZ

[TechnoViking (James)]

hmm more EP's, you can never have enough!!

[brian nordstrom (As avatar)]

yep those Orion 'Mini guiders' are the way to go , I have one on the way .
Brian.

Originally Posted by LewisM

I thought using my ED80 as guidescope was overkill.... (it kinda was - went back to using Orion's miniguidescope, and it works BETTER, and FAR less weight.)

[Logieberra (Logan)]

James, the mirror of that 114 will flop all around the sky as you try to guide - an inherent characteristic of newtonians. You'd be far better off with a little refractor with fixed optics, be it a modified 8x50 finder scope with Orion Star Shoot Autoguider (OSSAG) etc, a cheapy 60mm old school refractor (Meade, Saxon, Tasco etc) or perhaps make your own little guide scope as I like to do. I like to use old binoculars with leftover bits and pieces from home. Mixed with my OSSAG the image scale (IS) is 5.5. You could also add a barlow to this sort of cheapy setup to increase the IS. Many possibilities here. Cheers. (Happy to post of pic if interested).

[2stroke (Jay)]

Used a cheap meade F9 60mm ds here and didn't have to many problems though finding a guidestar involved so fiddle work. Now using a ST80 F5 and it rocks by far the best iv'e used in my limited experience. I have never had to move or adjust it to find a star and the thing weighs bugger all. You can use a poor man's guidescope and just mod a finder which is a orion mini guider, i just don't know how they would go with fainter stars and light pollution. Everything's a trade off money/weight/time and i just use the st80 and dsi pro, because there's never being an issues with the mount and scope combo i use in my light polluted skys and it gets a star without any fiddle.