Set up questions - Forums

Hello to all experienced photographers here. ATM I am using my star adventurer and a 60/360 photoline apo with my canon 60 d. Not that bad set up, but the only problem is the polarfinder which is not working well, even after professionell help. I decided to upgrade into a goto mount and a bigger scope.
I had some calls with specialists here in Germany….you‘ll be right when you expect 3 calls 10 different suggestions

Here are my thoughts
not to heavy and easy as I will stay mobile , driving out to my dark sky reserve spontaneously when weather is good.. so far my actual set up is perfect…..but as you all know there is always the wish to more

Eplore scientific Exos 2 pmc 8
here in Germany the mount is not the favourite but the option with creating its own wlan sounds nice to me
are there some who are using it.
Scope will be some 80/90 mm triplet refraktor with flattener, someone told me the explore scientific mak- newton is fine?
Autoguider will be the MGen , I am waiting for cheaper version 2 as the newest version is available

I will appreciate you suggestions
greetings from Berlin
Claudia

Hi Claudia,

Not that experienced, but I started into the hobby in a similar fashion: 72/432 Photoline on a guided Star Adventurer. I also share the philosophy of driving to dark spots whenever possible. I bought my SA form Karl Kloss (Teleskop-Spezialisten.de) and its polar scope was aligned perfectly, so I fortunately never had the same issues.

But since I had reached the limit of what I could achieve with that setup, I have upgraded to a bigger mount and scope. After long deliberation I have decided to get the iOptron CEM25p and I am very happy with this mount, I can achieve 0,6arcsec RMS guiding if I set it up very carefully and about 1arcsec if I do it in a rush. It's pretty light and has a loading capacity which is comperatively high. I have seen people using it very well with a 150/750 and approximately 8kg combined load. From what I have tried so far, it performs really well, I recently managed to do 14h in 15 min subs without any subs lost due to guiding errors! In my opinion, this is the best value/money small mount at the moment.

As for the scope: Be aware that the Mak-Newton is quite big and with camera and guidescope you will easily hit 9-10kg, so from what I know it needs a sturdier mount like at least an HEQ5 or better the EQ-6 R to guide it properly, but these mounts go towards the limit of what I would call portable. Maybe a Skywatcher 150/750 or 130/650 PDS Newton and a coma corrector would be a better choice, much lighter and otherwise similar properties.
As for refractors: I have just bought an used SkyWatcher Esprit 80 ED, which is a native f/5 triplet and there is a flattener designed for this scope. So far I've only manageged some test shots, but I really like what I see! It's a very fast widefield refractor and the optical performance is lovely. The CEM25p carries this scope + flattener and my DSLR + guidescope (all in all about 6kg) without issues. I chose this scope because I really liked some of the images I saw on astrobin taken with it.

I can only recommend to get whatever scope and mount you are going to choose from someone like the aforementioned source , he will give everything a once-over and correct small defects like your maladjusted polar scope before he ships it to you. You can also get a testing protocol for the optics for a small fee.

greetings from the other end of the Republic,

Marc