Clear night skies have been hard to come by during the May cycle of the moon. Why? Never fails, does it? New equipment guarantees cloudy nights. I’ve decided that refractors are the instrument of choice for astroimaging. I traded my trusty Celestron 14 OTA and associated goodies for a beautiful StellarVue SV115 f/7 instrument with the associated goodies, including a Televue .8 Focal Reducer (making the SV115 an f/5.6 instrument) and a FeatherTouch Digital Focuser. See the top photograph for these details.
The second photograph shows the SV115 as well as a Celestron-102 guidescope sitting in ScopeStuff 3-point rings and attached to the SV115 tube rings via a ScopeStuff piggyback adapter. The total payload load including the camera is less than half of the rated capacity of the CGE mount (65 pounds). Thus, carrying a much smaller load than formerly, the CGE should prove adequate for imaging. At least that is my working hypothesis. The jury is still out of course.
I’ve discovered that digital photon collecting is a lot like farming: you better harvest when the field is dry – or in this case, when the night sky is dark. Accordingly I’ve decided to add a third mount and scope. The scope is on order – a TMB130SS f/7. TMB is the name for Thomas M. Back telescopes. There’s a long story here which I won’t go into, but this instrument carries the best price of any TMB scope that has ever been manufactured.
I’m still deliberating on the mount selection. A second CGE might be a possibility, or a Takahashi-EM-200 Temma II (high end), and a Losmandy-GM8-Gemini (lower end). There’s no doubt, of course, that the TAK is the most accurate of these three. It’s also the most expensive.
I’ve also ordered two additional imaging cameras. A Hap Griffin modified Canon-350 and the SBIG ST-2000XCM. More details on all of the equipment when I finally get to use it.
Cheers.
Max
