Anyone using Meade DSI?

A great help, thanks a million. Now.. where did you buy your DSI-C? Think Ill get one.

Hi Stephen - I actually got mine on a trip over to the US last Xmas.

You could buy new - but shop around. Importing from the US *may* save you a few bob but you have to pay import duty (marginal) and VAT (21%). But you may get lucky and Customs 'miss' the shipment.

You could buy from the UK - they're quite pricey there and you still need ship and will still be liable for VAT (but not import duty) unless you buy from the North and go pick it up....

Andy McCrea of North Down Telescopes might be able to help you out.

Another alternative is to check out Astromart or another astro sales site and see if you can pick up a cheap second-hand DSI - though last time I looked, the price differential was marginal from a brand-spanking new DSI.

Finally, if you know of anyone going over to the US for their hols....

As regards your mount and OTA - if you are going to get seriously into astrophotography, spend your money on the mount. Period! If you stick the best OTA on a crap mount, you'll get crap photos. What you are looking for in a mount is:

Good gears and motors.
Stable and steady under your local wind conditions.
Good tracking ability (low periodic error)

Note that GOTO is not necessary, but it can help when you're trying to find DSO's.

Now, some of the folks here will kill me for saying this and will no doubt contradict me.... The top end mounts (for amateurs) are German Equatorials (GEMS). They will not induce rotation in your images but do require good polar alignment. They can also carry heavier OTA's and you can change your OTA whenever you like.

Fork-mounts are typically made for one specific OTA - indeed, you usually buy the mount and OTA together. They suffer from field-rotation when taking long exposures, but you can avoid that with a de-rotator or by use of advanced software (for short exposures). The smaller fork mounted OTA's are usually supplied on mouts that really don't cut it for long-exposure astrophotography. I have a Celestron C8 - the OTA is great, but the mount really limits my abiltiy. I took the OTA off and stuck it on an AP1200. This significantly improved my imaging.

The OTA is secondary and the choice will depend on your mount and what you want to do. You may need to invest in a focal reducer and a few other gizmos but they can come later. It is impoortant however to match the CCD to the OTA based on what you want to do. I'll only confuse you more if I go into that but if you need more advice, pop up a post.

Cheers

Dave McD

I put a post in 'observing equipment' a few days ago, looking for opinions on 3 10" scopes. Im leaning to the better mounted Skywatcher 10" Eq6, rather than the unndermounted meade lxd75 10", or the celestron c10ngt.

Stephen - I just took a look at the Skywatcher web site. Seems the EQ6 Skyscan gives you way more options. The key advantages that I see over the bog-standard EQ6 are:

Stepper motors
High slewing speed
Autoguider port (useful for the future)
Programmable error correction (via the keypad)

I would ask the vendor if its possible to put the mount on a pier. You may well buy it with the tripod but the ability to remount in on a solid pier will help future-proof your setup. Or you can ask if they supply the mount only and get your own pier...

The OTA is a fast newtonian. This will reduce your exposure time (compared to a 'slower' f-ratio) and thus help to 'hide' inaccuaracies with the mount. Fast Newtonians need more re-collimation than slower Newts but this shouldn't be a big deal. I myself am considering a 16" Newt...

Newts can suffer from coma at the edge of the field-of-view though - images at the edge of the FOV are distorted. You can buy ($$$) a coma corrector of course. But I'd ask the vendor if they have any images taken with this OTA they can let you see. Also, see if you can get any independent reviews of the OTA and the mount - do a search on the net.

I checked out the DSI/Skywatcher combo. You'll get 1.48 arcsec per pixel which will test your local seeing conditions and you'll get a native FOV of 10x14 arcmins (. With a 6.3 reducer, you'll get 2.33 arcsecs per pixel and a FOV of 17 * 22 arcmins which will be less testing of the seeing. As an illustration, M101 will just about fit in the FOV without the reducer but will fit in comfortably with a .63 reducer.

Hope this helps a bit more....

Cheers

Dave McD

Might be a bit pricey for me. The eq6 on its own has tracking motors - are these sufficient for astrophotography?, its 450gbp extra for the Skyscan.
Thanks a million for all the help.

Hi Stephen,
I got my DSI from Andromena Optics in dublin, €360 there-about.
Dave is quite right regarding imaging with it, believe me, and Dave will vouch for it, I spent many nights pulling my hair out trying to get images. It needs work, work, work, and probably a lot of work as well. I nearly gave up a while back, but Dave encouraged me to keep going. I'm glad I did. My images, although far from perfect, are beginning to give me a sence of satisfaction. I don't think that the hype regarding a beginner taking great images first night out is very accurate, in fact it's down right misleading. They should have left it at, beginners will get an image. I've taken reasonable images of the Cats Eye nebula and the Blinking nebula, also lunar images. My Saturnians and jovian images leave a bit to be desired, but i know they will improve. I know Dave has taken some good images of galaxies, but galaxies are very elusive to me, I haven't captured one yet. I don't know how Dave McD gets on with nebulae, maybe he finds them as elusive as I find the galaxies.
My opinion of the failures is probably what I went through, having too much faith in Meade's hype. I think people gave up, and like me they blamed the equipment, thought it wasn't working properly. My advice would be, forget what meade says, don't expect super images first time out especially, and be prepared for a lot of frustration, and hard work.
If you were to ask me my opinion of it back in March, I would tell you not to waste your money, ask me now, it's a great buy if you like to work at it, not a bad price at all.
Bill H.