Last post here was 2014…. lol. only 8 years ago.
Ok… so - I get why so many websites and blogs go dark… Kids… thats why.
So, A wee bit of a recap then. I had been doing AP (Astro-Photography) with my CPC1100 and Hyperstar through a Canon 5D DSLR. Then everything went straight to hell…. First, I had rebuilt the entire CPC Fork mount system… twice.. and replaced most of the electronics… 2-3 times. and I was still having issues with it resetting at random times during a session. Obviously - this is NOT good when you are trying to photograph deep sky objects. Then, around the same time, I went out one night to give it another shot and my Canon 5D threw up an error message… it would not take a shot. I looked it up online and its the Canon equivalent to the “red ring of death” on an X-Box.. toast… never to work again.
Well, I boxed everything up and put it away until 2016. At that time I got a bonus at work and decided to give it another try… so I purchased a CGEM Equatorial mount…… aaaaand used it exactly once before I got frustrated…. and boxed it up again… until around 2018.
Gave it another shot - and pulled out the CGEM for a couple of nights and tried and tried to get it to star-align… but never could find anything… GAAAHHHH!!!! Back in the case with you! …. until 2021. (Seeing a pattern here yet?)
I ordered a new product I heard about from Celestron called the “starsense” autoalignment tool. It basically takes the place of your finder and has a camera and wide angle lens in it… it works with your computerized mount to “automagically” align your scope. And, I’ll tell ya - it worked! Pretty well…. But it also showed me why I was having so much trouble.
You remember when I was doing all the AP with the Hyperstar? Well - the Hyperstar works at F2. The C11 Telescope without Hyperstar is at F10. Thats roughly 8 f-stops of light gathering and more importantly, the visual field is more than twice the size. Even with a wide field Eyepiece - the F10 focal ratio of the telescope shows such a small section of the sky that you have a hard time finding things.
So - I started playing around with a site called Astronomy Tools. The Field of view calculator showed me my problem… I’ll illustrated it below:
Comparison between TV85 Rich Field Scope and C11 SCT Fields of View with 25mm Plossl.
In the image above you can see the problem.. A short focal length refractor at around F7 shows 2.5 degrees of the sky while the Cassegrain (C11) only shows 0.54 degrees - that’s 4.6X more sky!!!
Now I’ll really blow your mind. Here is the same image overlayed with a Nagler 31mm Eyepiece to give the widest field possible.
Same as above with comparison to 31mm Nagler in TV85 scope.
The Nagler 31mm doubles it again to 4.24 degrees!
So - I saw my problem - as you can… clear as day. I needed to look into the “Rich Field” side of astronomy. So I bought the TV85 and the 31mm Nagler as well as several others and have been happily scanning the skies ever since. Here is a link to a forum post about my adventure: Cloudy Nights - TV85 - "Beginning Again"
That happened in March of 2021 - and I’ve since added a couple more scopes to the arsenal - a TV101 for a bit more aperture but sill widefield, a Coulter 13.1 F4.5 DOB (Widefield but LIGHT BUCKET!), and soon another SCT (8” LX200). The LX200 is a “bucket-list” scope for me, as I’ve wanted one since I was a kid… and with. my newfound knowledge I think I can effectively put it to use.
So - What about the C11 and CGEM? Well, I sold the starsense to fund the TV85 purchase and both went into long term storage. I will probably keep the CGEM and get adapter plates to use the TV scopes with it (more AP anyone?). But I think the C11 will be sold to fund some more nice glass - the Ethos line of EP’s are super widefield (around 100 degree AFOV) and I really want to play in that water..