Post by howie1 on Jan 2, 2019 1:39:57 GMT
No longer lugging kit around doing EAA or AP due my stuffed back ... but I went out the other night with a group from the club and just sat in the recliner camp chair with my binocs. Great time and little stress on the back.
Anyway, one of the club members is a great astrophotographer who has just had Skywatcher express desire to feature one of his shots in their 2019 calendar. He is about to do some travelling overseas, so he's bought the following highly portable rig at brand new (Aussie) prices ...
$539 Skywatcher AZ-GTi, $495 Skywatcher ED72 $495. The rig all fits in a backpack. He borrowed the astro clubs QHY 8L OSC ... which is not a cheap camera by any means, but I think he said his Canon 5D full frame won't reach focus in the ED72 and he'd left his other camera(s) at home ... so he used the clubs camera. Apparently there's a reducer corrector for the ED72 but in testing it from the supplier he found he reached focus without, but had color fringing and curved field and with the reducer corrector it just didnt focus. With that camera. He thinks his old 7D (I think it was) will reach focus.
Anyhow ... So first light and he found the AZ-GTi was very simple to setup, even in EQ mode. He uses a Raspberry Pi with the Linux versions of K-Stars for stellarium as well as use K Stars to control the AZ-GTi mount to slew, align etc. He found some free Linux open source software to control the borrowed QHY, and away he went. Limited to 120 secs exposures due tracking errors beyond that, but was very impressed with the AZ-GTi. He's also very impressed with the ED72 which he bought as a guidescope but wanted to try it as the travel, portable scope. So here's his 38 x 120 subs ... in jpeg format and not the orig high qual RAW format. Yes, it's not EAA but is instead AP .... But for a simple, cheap, highly portable rig ... wow! Ten years ago or even 5 years ago to get this mount/optics quality at a thousand bucks brand new would have been unthinkable. IMO.
Anyway, one of the club members is a great astrophotographer who has just had Skywatcher express desire to feature one of his shots in their 2019 calendar. He is about to do some travelling overseas, so he's bought the following highly portable rig at brand new (Aussie) prices ...
$539 Skywatcher AZ-GTi, $495 Skywatcher ED72 $495. The rig all fits in a backpack. He borrowed the astro clubs QHY 8L OSC ... which is not a cheap camera by any means, but I think he said his Canon 5D full frame won't reach focus in the ED72 and he'd left his other camera(s) at home ... so he used the clubs camera. Apparently there's a reducer corrector for the ED72 but in testing it from the supplier he found he reached focus without, but had color fringing and curved field and with the reducer corrector it just didnt focus. With that camera. He thinks his old 7D (I think it was) will reach focus.
Anyhow ... So first light and he found the AZ-GTi was very simple to setup, even in EQ mode. He uses a Raspberry Pi with the Linux versions of K-Stars for stellarium as well as use K Stars to control the AZ-GTi mount to slew, align etc. He found some free Linux open source software to control the borrowed QHY, and away he went. Limited to 120 secs exposures due tracking errors beyond that, but was very impressed with the AZ-GTi. He's also very impressed with the ED72 which he bought as a guidescope but wanted to try it as the travel, portable scope. So here's his 38 x 120 subs ... in jpeg format and not the orig high qual RAW format. Yes, it's not EAA but is instead AP .... But for a simple, cheap, highly portable rig ... wow! Ten years ago or even 5 years ago to get this mount/optics quality at a thousand bucks brand new would have been unthinkable. IMO.