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Re: Some Pointers
In reply to dadude,
3 months ago
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dadude wrote:
At the moment (wiggling by the day), I've been looking at other solutions for the same cost as an AstroTrac and the like (500-600$/£/€).
For the same money, I could get a (smaller) go-to like Mead ETX90 or a equatorial mount with motors.
With a go-to I would get a quick setup and could connect the camera as you described in your answer.
It looks like it's possible to angle/polar align some of the go-to's when reading the manuals.
A equatorial mount would be a better imaging platform?
I'm thinking of just putting the camera to the mount at the beginning.
Some astrophotographers use the Celestron CG5 for camera tracking. Forum member razor2277 has gotten great results with that mount and a Celestron-8. While the mount is less than highly rated by Phil Harrington in his article on mounts, it is workable. Really good mounts like a Losmandy GM-8 or GM-11 will set you back some serious money. But both are an investment in the future, being works of mechanical art.
Later on getting a telescope of some sort. Could potentially be a better combination than a go-to?
The first idea looks more fun and quick-and-dirty, the latter one sensible and upgradable.
There are some other factors, I don't know if I can see Polaris (to polar align) from my preferred spot in the back yard. As far as I understand, that's a vital thing for using equatorial mounts. If not, a self aligning go-to seems to be a even better idea.
Polaris is handy, but not vital. The southern hemisphere doesn't have a bright pole star and astronomers there seem to get by just fine. As for polar alignment with an equatorial mount, if your alignment is not optimum, many GoTo mounts can model the alignment error and still give fairly accurate GoTo performance. But as the alignment deviates from perfect, you will get progressively more field rotation, just like an alt-az mount. Really an alt-az mount is just an equatorial mount with very bad polar alignment. There's a discussion of this in the following link:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/post/50334399
I'm still waiting for the sky to clear up.
Wishing you success in your efforts!
Cheers,
/Tom
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Best Regards,
Russ
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