"Carsten A. Arnholm" wrote in message
...
Tom E. wrote:
http://www.buytelescopes.com/product...pid=4681&m=102

With this setup and optional motor drive, what kind of luck would
someone have in imaging stars without smear? Is a guiding scope
absolutely essential for any level of astrophotography? If so, what
is the cheapest way of going about that? I am not interested in
diving right into imaging, but want something that has the potential
in the future. Thanks,
-Tom

The Vixen GP is a good choice with a lot of flexibility without implicit
financial ruin. But astrophotography can mean many different things
depending on who you are talking to. So explaining what kind of imaging
you
might want to attempt could be helpful.

I own two Vixen mounts: a Super Polaris (the predecessor to the GP) , and
a
GPDX. What I like about these mounts is among other things the ability to
replace motors and controllers with 3rd party solutions that are very good
quality and cheaper than the original. The SP mount was bought many years
ago when I had zero experience, but I still use it today.

Whether you need guiding or not depends on the focal length and exposure
time of the camera you are imaging with. And guiding is not the only
option,
periodic error correction can be an alternative. But these things are not
what people start using without some experience. For wide field imaging,
all
you need is a good motor like the MT-1/SD-1 shown, but you will not be
able
to use any guidecamera with it.

clear skies
Carsten A. Arnholm
http://arnholm.org/
N59.776 E10.457


I second what Carsten says. Although I disagree with PEC being an
alternative to to guiding. It should be though of more as a method to
suppliment the drive of the scope, meaning that guiding corrections won't
need to happen as often. If you can do both together then you've got alot
of potential for perfect shots.

That scope has all the required elements for long exposure astrophotography,
the Equatorial mount. I'd suggest starting with some long exposure wide
field photography to start with, use a 50mm lens on a standard SLR with a B
setting. Put this ontop of your stope (so that you can guide with the
scope) set the focus to infity then open the shutter for 20 mins. This
should give a really good photo that'll wet your apetite for more. Then,
take you time and find the kit that will suit you most.

Regards

Colin Dawson
www.cjdawson.com