i already have a reasonable darkroom, and nothing for ccd. i'm more interested in planetary, lunar work, and the 'once in a while, what the hell' deep space shot.
>To do long exposure astrophotography, you will want to upgrade in the
>following areas:
>focuser - needs to handle the weight of a camera plus guider
>diagonal - check for good illumination across desired film size
>tube - can't sag
>mirror mount - mirror can't suddenly shift; also, mirror may need to be
>moved forward, affecting diagonal size
>counterweight system added
>improved finder
>adding some sort of guiding arrangement
i'm hoping my exposure times (sounds obscene :) ) will be on the short side. i live in a remote area and have a fairly dark site (milky way is always out if the cloud cover co-operates, m31 and the double cluster under casseopia are naked eye visible if you know where to look)
>Now, to the mount. Placing a 10-13" dob on an already inadequate 6" mount
>(sorry about the bluntness, but my opinion is that this mount is too shaky
no worry. i agree about the shakes. the piller is going to be mounted in concrete soon even if i don't get into the photos.
>My experience has been that to do astrophotography right, you pretty much
>end up rebuilding the whole scope, though, there are those who buy all by
>staying in the standard SCT product lines, with success.
any one have other suggestions on a dual purpose scope?
in a recent orion catalog there was a adjustable counter weight ad that amounted to a strip of velcro down the tube with what looked like bean bag weights with velcro. any one have any experience with this? it would allow removable counter balance weight, (looks to unsecure for me) thanks jm