Upgrading to a new scope

Hi Folks

Over the last year my 3.7 inch refractor has given me hours of viewing pleasure. Now that the SSIA is about to mature I am investigating upgrading to a larger aperture scope. The models of interest include the Meade 10 inch LX90GPS-uhtc(about £2500 stg), the 11" xlt celestron sct on the CG5 GoTO mount (about £1999 stg), and perhaps the celestron cpc 9.25 inch sct.

My question is, what would you think would represent the best value for money over the long term. While I will be using the scope for primarily visual observing, astrophotography may become more prevalent over the coming years when I get to grips with the learning curve.

any comments/advise would be appreciated

Many thanks

steve

Nice menu there Steve, but as for astrophotography, your scope is only as good as your mount, I have my cg5 goto mount for about 5 months, and has given me a lot of trouble, so much so that i've had to take it apart, and clean all the insides out, a lot of work that I did'nt bargain for.

Try if you can to get a better mount than this. Maybe some of the lads here will recommend...

Keith..

Thanx for the heads up on the cg5 keith. much appreciated

Try if you can to get a better mount than this. Maybe some of the lads here will recommend...

An AP1200??? He did say he has a mature SSIA to play around with! :lol: :lol: :lol:

Hi there,

Sky at Night did a review of goto mounts and the HEQ5 came out with flying colours. The ASGT (CG5GT) was not recommended for imaging due to it's large and erratic periodic error. That can be solved by autoguiding though.

The results for tracking were

Sphinx 96%
CG5GT 81%
HEQ5 94%
EQ6 91%

For the CG5GT they said that PE was around 1 arcminute and a bit erratic.
For the EQ6 it was about 30 arcseconds before PEC. I think the HEQ5 was the same.

That said, if you are autoguiding the CG5GT will get you long exposures and it is a good deal cheaper than the EQ6 & Sphinx. It's also about £200 cheaper than the HEQ5 Skyscan as far as I remember.

Trev

To put it simply, buy the biggest scope you can handle and afford.
Aperture is king here, if you feel you can carry the 10" or 11" scope out to the back garden and feel you can use it, then go for it.

As for astrophotography, the smaller scopes mounts you listed will present you with more tracking problems.