[Lvas] Green Lasers

[Douglas Phillipson]

Phillip Krumpos wrote:
> I am planning to buy a new telescope.  I want a telescope that will give me 
> the ability to use the Mellincam.
>
> My daughter, Joanne, will eventually inherit the telescope, so the weight of 
> the components will need to be considered.  My "bad back" also makes weight 
> an important factor.
>
> >From what I have read about astrophotography the most recommended telescope 
> type is apochromatic refractor.  It also appears that getting the right 
> telescope mount is as important as getting the right telescope.
>
> However, from what I have been able to gather from the internet, people are 
> using a very wide variety of telescopes and mounts with the Mellincam.  With 
> your experience with the Mellincam, I would like to get your opinion on what 
> would be good system to fully utilize the Mellincam.
>
> Phil K.
>   
Phil, the telescope you select is highly dependent on your available 
funding. Also should you choose a refracting scope, you won't be able to 
enjoy many  objects through the eyepiece.  Refractors just don't have 
the aperture to see anything good, unless you buy a very large one which 
costs big bucks.  They are only really good for planets and splitting 
double or triple stars, boring stuff in my book.  A reflector is much 
better.  I bet you would enjoy a 8 inch Meade, similar to mine but 
smaller to better accommodate your weight requirements.  8 inches is 
large enough to enjoy the Messier objects but also large enough to add 
the Mallincam for some really spectacular color images.  If you buy 
anything less than 8 inches, you will soon be very disappointed with it 
and want a larger one.  Then you will have to sell the smaller scope, 
only getting 75% of the money back.

I also suggest the Mallincam because of its ease of use.  If you buy a 
regular CCD camera, you will be dealing with complicated setup, snapping 
many images on a laptop, dark frames, doing image processing and stuff 
like that.  The Mallincam can do that but you don't have to, you can 
just get video out of it like I do, and display the image on a small 
inexpensive monitor.

I suggest a Meade 8 inch LX200R or a Celestron CPC 800 GPS.  They are 
both about 2,000 bucks.

Here are the links:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Meade: http://www.scopecity.com/category.cfm 
Select Brand = Meade,
Drive type = Computerized-GoTo
Mount type = Alt-Az
Scope Type = Schmidt-Cassegrain
Aperture = 8.00
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Celestron: http://www.celestron.com/c2/product.php?CatID=9&ProdID=33

Hope this helps.

Doug P 

P.S. Please say hi to Joanne for me...