Posts Made By: Ryan O'Grady

I am looking at the Astroview 120ST as a travel scope - the OTA weighs 8.5 lbs and is pretty short at f/5. I have seen posts where people have these hooked to a Bogen tripod, but I called Orion tech support and they told me:

a. There is no 1/4-20 mounting bracket on the Astroview 120 OTA.

b. Even if there was, it is too heavy for such a tripod.

Does anyone have experience with this? Or, am I being too ambitious with aperature? There is an Astroview 100mm f/6 that is lighter and does have the 1/4-20 bracket - maybe I will just go with this.

PS Just got my 80mm 2" plossl from SurplusShed - that is some piece of work. Eye relief is somewhere around 3 feet! Well not really but it is long. Will take it out tonight to try to compute AFOV but it looks pretty small.

I have a 10" Dob that is a lot of fun, but is too long to easily move in my car. I can pick up the entire thing while it is on its base (58 lbs), but not much more than that. What I want is the most aperature I can possibly lift and transport (by car), on a tripod/mount that can hang with a planet at 300-400X long enough for other people to get a look. With the Dob I have to put the object out of the field of view, let one person look as it moves through, reacquire the planet, and repeat. I read somewhere that Celestron SCT's weigh less than Meade's - but are there other options (Mak-Cass, other brands of SCT, other types of scopes)? Goto is not necessary, but the mount would have to be strong enough to take a 6lb piggyback - a 4" short-tube achromat. Budget is not so much a concern as value - I would rather pay $3,000 for a wonderful used OTA/mount that will hold its resale value than $2,000 for a tricked-up brand new GPS mount that will be worth half once the next line of electronics rolls out.

Thanks -

Ryan O

When I put a 1st mag star in the center of the FOV with a 25mm plossl and a 10" f/5 Dob, I see a couple of lines shooting off the star to the "south". If I try to focus to get rid of them, I get new lines shooting off to the "east". I have looked at some examples on the web of what a star looks like with astigmatism, turned down edge, etc., but do not see pictures that look similar to what I see. Any ideas? I attached a picture of what it looks like.

The Mak-Newts are more comparable to apo's - there is a contigency here that swears by this. Mak-Cass (the Meade 7" is a Max-Cass) has larger central obstruction but is small and is designed in a way that is hard to screw up. I have never looked through an Intes MN61 Mak-Newt but if I was in the market for a planetary scope, it would be on the list to try.

Ryan O

Forgive me if this has been discussed already, but when people have bought any of the LXD55 series of telescopes, did you have to pay to ship it from the Meade to the store AND from the store to you? Or, if a local pickup, shipping from Meade to the store plus sales tax? In other words, does the $579 SN-6EC really exist? I can only find the $674 SN-6EC...

Ryan O

Does anyone have experience with this combo? Theoretically it yields f/2, the same as Fastar, and (I assume) you can use any camera with it.

Ryan O

Finally hooked the Digi-T to my Coolpix 995, and got this shot of Jupiter, with Io peeking out of the bottom. I took some other ones that were better of Jupiter, but then Io didn't show up. Scope is a Meade LX200 10" in alt-az mode, 26mm plossl. I had the zoom on the Coolpix jacked up pretty good, set to infinity mode, and focused with Motofocus.

Mike - how do you know where the GRS will be at any given time?

The reason that I asked about the GRS was that the other day, I was staring intently at Jupiter through a 10" SCT, and could not make out any GRS. Must be on the other side, I figured. Well, I took some digital pictures and posted one of the raw images on the CCD forum, and someone replied that *he* could see the GRS in the picture. Sure enough, I stacked all the pictures I took and it was there, near the bottom, clear as day. Now, the seeing was horrible at the time (the Moon was shimmering at 120X). So, I am looking not for opinion but science, if someone put a gun to my head and said "see the GRS or die", given the bad light pollution and seeing of a cold, windy night in Southern California, what telescope do I want?

I want to buy a laptop to get started in CCD imaging, control my telescopes, etc. I have an LX200 10", a Tak FSQ106 on a yet to be determined mount (probably Tak), and an SBIG STV. All have just been purchased so I haven't played with them yet. What features do I need in a laptop? I see people talking about USB ports, other ports (serial), and also how much memory and hard drive space do I need?

Thanks -

Ryan