Quote:
Originally Posted by Nath2099
They seriously spend 4 grand plus on a guide scope? Too much money it is then.
|
There are various ways of guiding but most guiding can be done with a small, low cost refractor or even a modified finder scope. You don't use a guidescope on SCT's because the optics often move slightly as these scopes track (called mirror flop). A separate guidescope wont pick up that movement so we use an "off axis" guider which takes a tiny amount of the light from the main scope.
As to why else you would chuck a 4k scope on top of another telescope, there are several reasons:
1/ If the mount has a lot of capacity and is very high quality, it provides multiple imaging options.
2/ You can attach other equipment to this scope, like a photometer or spectroscope and do several sets of observations.
3/ You can do visual obs through two, or more, different scopes.
4/ You can use the second scope, if its a wide field scope, to track down fainter targets, or image a wide and narrow filed at the same time.
5/ You can show off. Some people are, for example, TAK addicts
(and I'll leave it at that.
)