Thanks,

I'll see if I can get my hands on the August S&T.

Bruce

"Mike Wagenbach" wrote in message
om...
"brulu" wrote in message
...
Also of course I would like a decent telescope for visual observation.
I'm
getting interested in the Celestron C5-S, it comes with the CG-5 mount
(which includes a tripod that I would probably try to sell off.). Or if
the
CG-5 seems like an inadequate mount, I would consider getting the C5 OTA
(or
maybe even the spotting scope) and a seperate mount.

If you like, the same mount is available through Orion as the
SkyViewPro, either alone or in packages. As far as I know, they don't
sell the mount head separately from the tripod.

The current issue of Sky and Telescope has a review of this mount
bundled with a 6" Newtonian, and has a sidebar about tweaking the
mount for imaging. As far as I can remember, they don't show any
attempts at actually imaging with it, however.

This is a pretty new mount package, so it *might* have altered the
conventional wisdom about cost of imaging mounts. I have one, but
only use it visually, so I can't comment. Visually, it is pretty
nice. Polar scope and drives are extra cost, but pretty cheap.

Apparently refractors are usually used as guidescopes. I've read that
the focusers on the Chinese refrators are too flexy for guiding, so
you'll probably want to get something from someone else. If you only
want to do piggyback conventional lens photography, you might
investigate whether there are rings to fit the 90 mm Mak-Cass and try
that as a guidescope, to keep weight, length and cost down and focal
length up. The obvious concern would be mirror flop during an
exposure. Thanks perhaps to Synta's infamous glue/grease in the
focuser, my 127 mm mak shows little image shift, so this might not be
a problem.

If you do want to try photos through the scope, the Celestron SCT
would be a better choice.