From: Mark Gaffney <markgaffney@me.com>
Date: January 30, 2011 1:13:23 PM MST
To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] OT: Astro-Tech 8" RC Astrograph
Milton,
What price were you looking at for the AT8RC?
Astronomics have it for $1395 I notice;
Are the other dealers much the same..?
They don`t have a corrector so you`d perhaps have less dew problems..
I remember my old C10-NGT used to do a pretty good job of fogging up but that was mostly the secondary..
Occasionally it`d be right down the back of the scope too & I`d have to apply the hair dryer to the outside of it.
You`ll have to watch out for flying birds (& snowfalls..)too!
Mark.
On 31/01/2011, at 6:11 AM, Milton Aupperle wrote:
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