My Starship of choice...Pt. 1: Telescope selection

A friend, Michael J, had given me a priceless gift. He probably didn't know he was doing it, and since astronomy has now taken center stage in my hobbies and pocketbook, he might question ever giving it to me. What did he give me? A cheap, wobbly, department store 70mm achromatic refractor and webcam branded by Meade (although I seriously doubt Meade Instruments manufactures this scope). You see, I have been hooked on astronomy before, and circumstances in the past caused me to sell my prized 10" dobsonian scope. I bought in preparation for the great 2003 Mars apparition, and it did not disappoint. Seeing the polar ice cap and dark features hooked me for life. Views of Jupiter were similar and I was amazed at how much more detail I could eek out compared to the Meade ETX-90 I had around 1996.

After receiving the 70mm achromat from my friend, I was not expecting much. Color wash is common at the edges of bright objects in achromatic refractors, so I pretty much expected to be limited to the moon. It did provide satisfactory views of the moon with the telltale chromatic abberation. On a lark I swung the scope over to Jupiter, popped in the 9mm MA eyepiece (which worsened the chromatic abberation) and took a look. To my surprise I saw clearly the north and south equatorial belts as well as a few dark brown spots or barges. Unfortunately the GRS was not visible, either by limiting magnification or being on the other side of the plantet. That did it, I once again was hooked on astronomy.

I ended up trading a DSLR camera for an Orion XT-8 dobsonian from a co-worker. The scope was like new and still held perfect collimation, or mirror alignment. I took it out several times and was duly impressed by the views. That being said, since I now had the urge to share images from the eyepiece, I found that trying to image from the eyepiece of a non-tracking scope (scope with motor drive to compensate for sidereal movement) was very frustrating. It was maddening at high magnification.

It didn't take long before I knew that I had to have a scope capable of tracking. I, at the time, only planned on doing lunar and planetary imaging, as long exposures were not necessary with those targets and I could get away with a motor-driven altitude/azimuth mount. The altaz mounts are not designed with astrophotography in mind and are generally cheaper. They are designed for visual tracking only, and do not require polar alignment or periodic error correction. As such these mounts are much cheaper, however during long exposure photography they are only capable of a max exposure of about 20 seconds before star motion (field rotation or periodic error both) become apparent in the photo. Being close to christmas, sales were everywhere and I eventually settled on a Celestron NexStar 8SE 8" computerized Schmidt-Cassegrain design telescope. The scope came with a hand controller that allows for selection of thousands of night sky objects. After alignment, the scope will slew to the selection and automatically track it for you.

I will save an in depth review for later, but suffice it to say I am beyond pleased with the performance of this telescope. Despite not having a good planetary imager, it does it's job by keeping targets properly aligned and tracked within the eyepiece. The goto function has allowed me to see more in one night that all previous years of hunting and star hopping...and without the need of a star chart. It is not only convenient, it lets me maximize my time under the stars. A big plus, especially at 20 degrees F.

Next post will deal with my imaging chain, and how I get killer astrophotos by cheating the equatorial mount/long exposure rule. You can do some amazing deep sky stuff with the celestron 8" sct on an altaz mount and I can prove it. At any rate, here is my "starship of choice"...