Scope upgrade ?

I currently own an LX10. I've been looking at an upgrade to something
larger, maybe 11, 12" or larger SCT.

Just got December 2003 Astronomy magazine and looked at the reader gallery
with dozens of Mars photos, the kind of thing I'm interested in. Are they
representative of the quality you can get ?. The best appears to be the 16"
Pentax, presumably at some huge cost, and Damian Peach's 10" doesn't look
far behind. Some of the 14" and 16" results look decidedly poor in
comparison. Is a lot of this down to the processing ?.

Basically is it worth paying the extra for the the difference between the
sizes to view the planets etc when from these results 10" looks good ?

Thanks

Basically is it worth paying the extra for the the difference between the
sizes to view the planets etc when from these results 10" looks good ?

You need the right "seeing" and climate for scopes well above 10 and 12 inches.
Keep that in mind.

RB

It all depends on what you are trying to do with your scope.
If you are only interested in photographing the planets and no real
deepsky observing. I would suggest going with a refractor (expensive)
or upgrade to a 10-12 inch SCT. The refractor will blow away the SCT
as far as clarity and detail. The draw backs are price, and small
image size. The SCT will have a bigger and brighter image but lack
the clarity and detail. My suggestion would be a 10" SCT like a Meade
or Celestron. And do digital photography. Alot of people are using
web cams for planetary work and coming out with amazing photos. The
web cam is alot cheaper to buy and easier to use than a CCD camera.
Down load the program registax and it will compile all of your photos
that you take into one image that will geive you the images that you
see in the astronomy magazine.

With the web cam you would still be able to use your LX10. It
would be a great scope for that. Registax will take a 10 minute video
of the planets and scan through it frame by frame and pick the
clearest and best then create one image. This is also called stacking
images. The web cam and registax is the easiest and quickest to get
great photos. Within the first night you will have great images.

Here is registax's website, you can download it free and they
have links and photos. I hope this helps you.
http://aberrator.astronomy.net/registax/

Just to be clear, its my understanding that the USER picks the best images,
frame by frame, not the app. The application simply stacks them.


With the web cam you would still be able to use your LX10. It
would be a great scope for that. Registax will take a 10 minute video
of the planets and scan through it frame by frame and pick the
clearest and best then create one image. This is also called stacking
images. The web cam and registax is the easiest and quickest to get
great photos. Within the first night you will have great images.

Here is registax's website, you can download it free and they
have links and photos. I hope this helps you.
http://aberrator.astronomy.net/registax/

"MP" wrote in message
...
Just to be clear, its my understanding that the USER picks the best
images,
frame by frame, not the app. The application simply stacks them.
You can do either.
In Registax, you can have the application reject images based on certain
'rules'. Sometimes these work quite well, but for other types of image they
can give slightly spurious results (there are a couple of different rules to
choose from, and a lot of adjustment range). One trick is to 'loop through'
this section several times, going back and seeing what percentage of frames
are being rejected. You can also reject frames manually, in a seperate
window, by just 'unticking' the select box against a frame. In common with
most of the features of Registax, the effect of the rules and operation, can
be less than 'intuitive'. Registax is a great program, but has so many
parameters and settings, that it is easy to lose track of how to make it
work well.
The default settings are a fairly good 'start', but with fine tuning, some
superb results can be obtained.

With the web cam you would still be able to use your LX10. It
would be a great scope for that. Registax will take a 10 minute video
of the planets and scan through it frame by frame and pick the
clearest and best then create one image. This is also called stacking
images. The web cam and registax is the easiest and quickest to get
great photos. Within the first night you will have great images.

Here is registax's website, you can download it free and they
have links and photos. I hope this helps you.
http://aberrator.astronomy.net/registax/

Best Wishes

Thanks for the info.

"KArcher" wrote in message
om...
It all depends on what you are trying to do with your scope.
If you are only interested in photographing the planets and no real
deepsky observing. I would suggest going with a refractor (expensive)
or upgrade to a 10-12 inch SCT. The refractor will blow away the SCT
as far as clarity and detail. The draw backs are price, and small
image size. The SCT will have a bigger and brighter image but lack
the clarity and detail. My suggestion would be a 10" SCT like a Meade
or Celestron. And do digital photography. Alot of people are using
web cams for planetary work and coming out with amazing photos. The
web cam is alot cheaper to buy and easier to use than a CCD camera.
Down load the program registax and it will compile all of your photos
that you take into one image that will geive you the images that you
see in the astronomy magazine.

With the web cam you would still be able to use your LX10. It
would be a great scope for that. Registax will take a 10 minute video
of the planets and scan through it frame by frame and pick the
clearest and best then create one image. This is also called stacking
images. The web cam and registax is the easiest and quickest to get
great photos. Within the first night you will have great images.

Here is registax's website, you can download it free and they
have links and photos. I hope this helps you.
http://aberrator.astronomy.net/registax/

I'm not sure I agree... I know that I may be bucking "conventional wisdom"
here, and everyone's eyes are different, but I have yet to see a 6"
refractor that blows away a 15" reflector as far as clarity and detail, and
I often observe in between a guy who has a $10,000+ Astrophysics refractor,
and one with a 15" Dob, and have compared the view using the same eyepiece
in both scopes on more than one occasion.

"KArcher" wrote in message
om...
It all depends on what you are trying to do with your scope.
If you are only interested in photographing the planets and no real
deepsky observing. I would suggest going with a refractor (expensive)
or upgrade to a 10-12 inch SCT. The refractor will blow away the SCT
as far as clarity and detail.