Posts Made By: Michael Roark

Although I mostly agree with the replies to this thread, I must say that it's not impossible to capture high quality astrophotos with something like an Orion Short Tube refractor or even a Newt on the SkyView Pro Mount. I was told over and over that I couldn't do deep sky imaging with the Orion SkyView Pro 8 EQ that I was wanting to purchase; however, since I've purchased it, I have captured several film images (prime focus) of deep sky objects with my SVP 8 EQ and the results were very good (in my opinion). I've attached my very first image I took of M42 using the Orion SVP 8 EQ with a simple OM-1, Kodak E200 and RA guiding for 15 minutes from light polluted skies. Granted the image is slightly out of focus, has some tracking error and some vignetting, it's still very possible using a "cheap" telescope setup. I'm even building a Cookbook CCD to use with the scope. Additionally, if you have the backyard space, you can always install a concrete/wood pier (less than $100) to attach the mount/telescope to. This will provide a very stable platform that makes polar-aligning simple, and allows you to acquire long exposure images (assuming you have the off-axis guider or an autoguider in a guidescope). That's my $0.02.

David, you would probably have better luck posting at the Cookbook CCD Yahoo Group page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cookbook_ccd/

There are also several websites created by people who have made the CB245 (and variations of the camera). As far as which camera to build, if you're going to proceed with this project, you might as well build the CB245. The level of difficulty is going to be roughly the same for both the 211 and 245 (except there are just more connections on the 245). The biggest hurdle you will have is finding the TC245 chip. Check the classifieds on Astromart...they appear there occasionally. Good luck!

Mike