Beginner Mistake (but it all worked out)

For my 2nd blog post, I wanted to give a little insight on a choosing a scope and mount. There are a lot of posts on this so its not like its new or anything but if I had to do it over again, I would. When I first started thinking about getting my first scope, I did a fair amount of research. I knew I wanted to do visual viewing and astrophotography. I really was expecting to do more visual viewing than AP. I thought about going with a celestron c8 on an Alt AZ mount. I actually bought one. It arrived not working and I sent it back. This ended up being a good thing because as I kept researching, I found that I needed an equatorial mount to shoot good shots of my targets. I went way over what I wanted to spend but ended up buying the celestron edge 8HD on a cgemII mount. This is a Schmidt Cassegrain optical tube or SCT. I read that the Edge gave descent flat pics and it could be used with hyperstar. Here is my first scope and mount:

I love this set up. I really do. It has a 2000mm focal length so I can get good detail on distant objects when using an eyepiece, it was easy for me to align with star sense, and after I got the hyperstar, I was shooting at f/2 and 400mm. This was actually amazingly easy and for a true beginner, I was already shooting pics of orion, horsehead, and andromeda. I had found that all I wanted to do now is AP as well. Here was my problem. When I wanted to shoot (or use an eyepiece), I had to start setting up this beast about an hour earlier and it would take me about 30-45 mins to break down when I was done. It is not a set up I could easily move around as it weighs about 80lbs or so. So this led me to start looking for a more portable set up. I sold my hyperstar and put the money towards a new portable set up. I did not want to sell my whole rig because I still felt I would use it plenty for more distant objects at f7. At this point, I did what I probably should have done in the first place and that is to buy myself a rig more geared to AP. An apochromatic refractor was talked about a lot and this is what I decided to research. Here is the set up I settled on:

I ended up buying a Meade 70mm 6000 apochromatic refractor. This scope has a 350mm focal length and shoots at f5. That’s not as fast as hyperstar but I was willing to give that up for a more portable set up. I put this on a ioptron cem25p mount which took me some getting use to over the celestron mount but I have come to really like it. I can easily carry this mount from inside my house out to my backyard and when Im done, I can just carry it right back inside and either leave it for the next time or break it down the next day. I am actually getting close to the same focal length that I had with the hyperstar. The images are sharper though on this set up in my opinion.

All in all, my point of this post is if you are like me (and I knew nothing about telescopes, mounts, or AP), depending on what you want to use it for, bigger is not always better. If I could do it over again, I would go with a smaller refractor for AP. It was way cheaper and better for my needs. On the flipside, I learned a lot and I now have 2 incredible scopes and mounts for all kinds of different applications. Only problem now is storing it all :)

NOTE: The Meade 6000 series of APO’s are not for visual viewing. ONLY AP! So if you were wanting to do visual and AP, a different type of small refractor might be better for you. There are plenty out there that can be used for both and might be more well rounded for a beginner.