New toys vs Mother Nature

I bought a Risingcam imx571 a little over a month ago and still have not had a chance to use it.
Got you beat. I bought a Williams Optics ZenithStar 103mm "kit" about 4 years ago... and have just NOW really started using it. The bad thing is, I have a Celestron NexStar 8se sitting in a case that 's only been out 3 times in 4 years also.
I'm currently working on getting it DSO and live view capable.
 
My weather has turned to you know what. I will put together a vid of a trick to tame the internal guiding in SM when I can see more than 100' at night. Canadian winter is usually good for sky, not this year....
 
We were supposed to have storms today/tonight... but went out and it's beautiful out... other than the clouds of mosquitos that decide to come feast.
 
LOL You want to avoid mosquitoes come on up. -20C and a breeze keeps
em away! :ROFLMAO:
 
Well, for the past week, it's been complete sky coverage by clouds... and guess what.. yes, I got some new toys in for the Celestron (OAG for it). Haven't been able to hook it up, but that may turn out to be a boon since I have not unpackaged it and it's the regular ZWO OAG, which after some additional research shows that it's small mirror may not work well with the NextStar 8se.
 
Well, for the past week, it's been complete sky coverage by clouds... and guess what.. yes, I got some new toys in for the Celestron (OAG for it). Haven't been able to hook it up, but that may turn out to be a boon since I have not unpackaged it and it's the regular ZWO OAG, which after some additional research shows that it's small mirror may not work well with the NextStar 8se.
The ZWO OAG has a very small mirror & I found it useless with my 8" Edge HD
 
The ZWO OAG has a very small mirror & I found it useless with my 8" Edge HD
That's what I'm afraid of and contemplating returning it and simply getting the Celestron OAG or the large version of the ZWO one.
 
That's what I'm afraid of and contemplating returning it and simply getting the Celestron OAG or the large version of the ZWO one.
I never had much luck with a OAG on the Edge, finding a guide star was always a exercise in frustration
 
I never had much luck with a OAG on the Edge, finding a guide star was always a exercise in frustration
I think a lot of that has to do with the guide camera... mot of what I have seen recommended is a ASI290mm mini as one of the better guide scopes because of the sensor size.
I may simply end up getting a bar on top and mounting a regular scope on it.... but that has it's negatives also from what I understand.
 
My old SCT is limited to where a guide scope can be mounted. That said, with all the gear mounted on the tail balancing becomes an issue.
 
I used this setup with success, guide scope is a Altair 66 LightWave at 40mm FL. I mounted a ADM bar on top so I could adjust the guide scope mounting spot

EdgeGuidescope.jpg
 
Stan, where did you get the bar that your tracking/top scope is mounted to from? I've been trying to find similar and haven't really found what I have been booking for. If I am going to mount a scope to use for tracking (which I really would rather do instead of OAG) I wanted to find a bar instead of mounting directly to the scope itself like you do with a simple finder scope/red dot.
I'm also looking at making a mount to go onto the front of my current refractor rig to place the RPi/PBBAV there to off-set the weight on the back of that rig as I'm almost out of adjustment on the mount track to offset the weight in the back.
 
Stan, where did you get the bar that your tracking/top scope is mounted to from? I've been trying to find similar and haven't really found what I have been booking for. If I am going to mount a scope to use for tracking (which I really would rather do instead of OAG) I wanted to find a bar instead of mounting directly to the scope itself like you do with a simple finder scope/red dot.
I'm also looking at making a mount to go onto the front of my current refractor rig to place the RPi/PBBAV there to off-set the weight on the back of that rig as I'm almost out of adjustment on the mount track to offset the weight in the back.
https://www.admaccessories.com/product-category/v-series/v-series-dovetail-bar/
I ordered the Celestron bar from here than attached a vixen Dovetail on top, it's a real solid setup for a guide scope & camera
 
The more I think about it, the more I lean towards getting another scope (reflector) and using it for the DSO stuff and simply keeping the Celestron for live viewing by family members and friends when I have the other rig(s) set up doing their capturing.
Realize, I'm still in the process of getting a local astronomy group up and running, and most of them won't have telescopes, so I'll be carrying the load at least for awhile of supplying equipment. The Nexstar 8se at 8 inches will be great for that, especially planetary viewing. By going with a reflector, I can target it at the EQ-35 Pro that came with my current capture setup (now upgraded to the EQ6-R Pro) and use the Celestron with it's shipping mount (which I have for sale but no bites) and then use the reflector with the EQ-35 Pro.
I thought about a Dobsonian but it's pretty much limited to live viewing... and with a quality reflector I can eventually move it over to astrophotgraphy.
 
I bought a meade OAG. I never could get the thing to work. I ended up buying a guidescope for it.
 
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