From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: January 30, 2011 12:11:08 PM MST

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] OT: Astro-Tech 8" RC Astrograph

Hi Ray;

On 30-Jan-11, at 10:56 AM, Ray Byrne wrote:

Hi Milton,

Oh the excitement of the new scope wonderful isn't. On thing I was going to say does it mean you are going to throw in the towel on Solar System stuff as your planned new scope isn't ideal for that. How will it fair with Lunar and planetary?

I've seen a few images taken  of the moon and Jupiter with an ATRC8, but only at prime focus. So that aspect is a bit of a question mark.

I get maybe one or two nights a year that the skies are clear and stable enough to go beyond 2 meter focal lengths anyhow. Most nights it looks like this:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Astro_IIDC/files/Planetary/SaturnAverageSeeing_MJA20090404.mp4

which was shot at prime focus / 2,000 mm that night. I planned on capturing the motion of Titan over time that night, gave up pretty quick.

Living under the Jet Stream and having all the inversions, local thermals, chinooks and other foothill related weather issues doesn't lend itself to doing long focal length imaging here. I'd have to move about 800 km east before I'd be out of the weather influence of the mountains, but the Jet Stream would still be flowing over me.

So far I plan on keeping the C8 and might use it for longer focal length imaging. The brand new NON Edge C8s go for $600 CDN now (about 50% off), and I guess Celestron is clearing them out. So for a used one (even if it is Carbon Fiber tube) I won't get much for it.

I hope you have great experiences with your new baby

I'm still looking into it, so I have not made a decision to buy yet. The two big detractors are the vanes which give diffraction spikes and like the Edge series, no dedicated Focal Reducer / Flattner for it currently. Astro-Tech had one but recalled it because it was defective and just didn't work well. I've seen images that people have taken with a other models of 0.75x to 0.8x reducers but It's not clear which ones work best with the ATRC8.

TTYL..

Milton J. Aupperle

Ray

On 30 Jan 2011, at 08:53, Milton Aupperle wrote:

And imaging. I've seen Lunar and Planetary images taken with them too.

TTYL..

Milton Aupperle