Random Musings: Visual or Astroimaging, my conundrum and where the future is heading

The Conundrum

I think I am having a mid astronomy life crisis. I am sure every astronomer goes through this at some stage. I am still pretty much a grassroots astro dabbler, abeilt a very advanced one. Its funny how things can change. I am now a full on astro imager, with the occasional dabble in visual (more like casual perusing after I finish imaging). I am still not sure what has changed since for the longest time, I never even had the urge to image. I think there are many reasons to this. The move from my beloved southern skies in Australia was a bit catalyst. For one all those glorious southern sky gems are no longer accessible in the northern hemisphere. I remember the first time I got under truly dark skies here in California. That was at Mount Pinos, Los Padres National Park and while the first trip there was magical (there was snow on the ground the first time I got up there!!!!), the northern milky way was not as enticing as its southern counterpart. In fact as soon as I got there, I started looking in the direction of my good old friends, Sagittarius and Scorpius! And till this day, whenever summer comes around, I still point my scopes towards those southern wonders!

Also living in an apartment building for almost 5 years made a difference to the usage of my once frequently used 10" GS dobsonian. We shared a carport with our neighbors and hence I could not store my big scope in the garage for quick trips out to dark skies. Having to lug that beast in two trips meant the scope was getting less and less use. I ended up using my small scopes more, and ultimately replaced my beloved 10" f/5 with a Celestron C8 SCT OTA, one of the best decisions I ever made so far. Now that I have an Orion VersaGo III, this incredible set up gets used heaps. I can easily carry the whole shebang from one location to the other. Also I am not sacrificing that much in terms of aperture (had both scopes side by side and the the 8" went head to head with the 10"...views were consisently just as bright...even on globulars!).

The third factor was the ease in getting quality gear for cheap here in the USA. "Embarrassment of riches" is an understatement. I would have never dreamed of owning a GOTO scope, partly due to my cheap arse mentality. So when I chanced upon a Celestron NexStar 102GT for under $200 in a local Costco, I literally threw my money at them. That was a good thing too since I have not seen such a good deal surface after that fateful Christmas! A similar scope from other vendors go for at least $350 or more! So what if there is only 4,000 objects in its database as opposed to 40,000! I can always upgrade my hand paddle to a more advanced one later on.

Also since I am now in Continental USA (CONUS for short!), buying used gear from Astromart is a whole lot cheaper (postage cost next to nothing so most sellers absorb postage!)! I quickly found used CCD imagers for cheap on Astromart, progressing from a Meade DSI I OSC, to an Orion DSI OSC and currently my Meade DSI II OSC. While these are not top of the line CCD images with big arse chips, the images they throw up are good enough for me, and are pretty much inline with my grassroots imaging thinking. My current basic astro-imaging set up is a lowly Celestron Travelscope 70mm ST OTA, riding on the Celestron NexStar GT mount (similar to the Celestron SLT and Orion StarSeeker II series of mounts!). With this OTA mount combo, I can go for wider fields without the use of a focal reducer, and have an exposure time of up to 30 second without star trails for my subs!

The Future

"Orion Telescopes SkyViewPro mount"

"Orion Telescopes Sirius Mount"

Now that I have moved from my apartment dwelling into a house with a humongous yard, I have started to re-evaluate my equipment yet again. I have come to the realisation that I really love astro imaging and have been having visions of acquiring a much more precise mount for my lil and not so lil scopes. The criteria for the mount would be that it would have to have full GOTO capability with that 40,000++ object database, and be able to handle at least my C8 OTA(12.5lb) for deeper sky imaging. Several mounts spring to mind, an EQ5 class mount (Orion Sky View Pro with a 20 lb load capacity), or better yet an Orion Sirius Mount (30 lb load capacity), if I go by the two times load capacity rule! I am leaning more towards the latter since the next step up is the monstrosity of a mount, the Synta EQ6 or Orion Atlas mount, that is almost twice the weight of the Sirius mount! If I were to acquire such a mount, I would probably start imaging from home more, and would probably have to invest in a autoguider (shouldn't be to hard to get a used one) and some narrowband imaging filters.

"Meade LightBridge 16"

That said, I have always dreamed of owning that big dob that would let me go really deep. A few years ago, the 10" was doing wonders for me, as I had more free time and darker skies in the outback in Australia. However my lust for more faint light has led me to this conclusion, I would have to make a substantial jump in aperture to take my views of dim fuzzy's with little or no detail (The jump from 10" to 12.5" side by side convinced me of this. A good example is galaxies, in this case NGC 1365 in Fornax. Detail in the spiral arms were "detectable" in the 10" and 8", but looked more like a photograph with averted vision in my buddy's 12.5"!) to details jumping out at you! My dream scope would have to be in the 14" to 16" range. Budget for this would have to be between $1600 and $2000 for a 16" class scope. These would also have to be truss, and since I am still pretty much a cheapskate, I will be looking at purchasing a mass produced scope (i.e. they will be heavy in comparison to the premium dobs out there). One of the strikes against this is I can see myself finding excuses to not use the scope as set up and takedown would be increased! So for the price would I get one of them heavy SkyWatcher or Meade Truss tube dobs, or pay a little bit more for a light weight Hubble optics scope. Only time will tell!

"Hubble Optics 16" UL"