urgent help needed

I just order the new Meade 20" f/8 RCX400 on MAX Robotic German Equatorial
Mount with Alt-Azimuth Pier
and my hope is it'll be shipped to me middle of march,

But since i couldn't decide at the time of my order, what CCD camera i
should buy, i need some professional help,
my budget is a bit thigth since i already spend almost 30000$ on the
telescope and nearly 2000 $ on various accessorys,
so i will spend no more than 5-6000 $, but at the same time i want the best
so what is possible in that range

should i buy second hand to obtain my goals or ?

Greetings from Starman

Starman wrote:
I just order the new Meade 20" f/8 RCX400 on MAX Robotic German Equatorial
Mount with Alt-Azimuth Pier
and my hope is it'll be shipped to me middle of march,

I hope you have also budgetted for an observatory shed to put it inside.
The weather will not be kind to it under a tarpaulin.

But since i couldn't decide at the time of my order, what CCD camera i
should buy, i need some professional help,
my budget is a bit thigth since i already spend almost 30000$ on the
telescope and nearly 2000 $ on various accessorys,
so i will spend no more than 5-6000 $, but at the same time i want the best
so what is possible in that range

Best for what purpose?

Accurate scientific photometry or one shot colour images represent the
two extremes. You would be well advised to ask on s.a.ccd-imaging and
s.a.research if you are serious about wanting recommendations for
research grade astronomical CCDs.

But you sound rather like a troll.

should i buy second hand to obtain my goals or ?

It might help if you said what you intended to do with it. If your goal
is simply to spend $6000 on a CCD just pick one at random.

I would suggest you build the scope a permanent weather proof shelter
before buying any more sexy sounding kit.

Regards,
Martin Brown

Martin Brown wrote:
Starman wrote:
....snip

But you sound rather like a troll.

I reckon he had the unsuppressible urge to let everybody know he has
forked out the 30K. Big rich guy...


should i buy second hand to obtain my goals or ?

It might help if you said what you intended to do with it. If your goal
is simply to spend $6000 on a CCD just pick one at random.

As a matter of fact that choice should have been the first one,
defining the pixel scale, angular size covered, sensitivity and such,
but brainless people tend to heed no attention to these trivial
details. I'll suggest dart throwing as a mean to select the suitable
imager. If this fails then a 9mm ploessl will do just as fine, I
suspect.

I would suggest you build the scope a permanent weather proof shelter
before buying any more sexy sounding kit.

Sure, so it will never thermally equalize, although I doubt it will
make any difference.

Cheers

Andrea T.

"Starman" wrote in message
k...


I just order the new Meade 20" f/8 RCX400 on MAX Robotic German
Equatorial
Mount with Alt-Azimuth Pier
and my hope is it'll be shipped to me middle of march,

But since i couldn't decide at the time of my order, what CCD camera i
should buy, i need some professional help,
my budget is a bit thigth since i already spend almost 30000$ on the
telescope and nearly 2000 $ on various accessorys,
so i will spend no more than 5-6000 $, but at the same time i want the
best
so what is possible in that range

should i buy second hand to obtain my goals or ?

Greetings from Starman




Are bragging or complaining?

I suggest you google up SBIG and Apogee and puruse their offerings.

I also, humbly, suggest you supply more budget if you want the 'best'.

I read my original posting, and when i did that i became very clear that i
must have been sounding like a spoiled kid or worse, maybe a troll ;-)

No i'm not that rich, just lucky (i won some money in lotto)

And i have for about 2 years been dreaming of buying a huge telescope, my
most expencive so far has been around 1200 $
so this is a huge step for me in preformance

regarding the permanent weather proof shelter, this i have, it's a bit
primitive but it's usefull for my purpose and maybe i'll upgrade when i get
my
new telescope

skrev i en meddelelse
ups.com...

Martin Brown wrote:
Starman wrote:
...snip

But you sound rather like a troll.

I reckon he had the unsuppressible urge to let everybody know he has
forked out the 30K. Big rich guy...


should i buy second hand to obtain my goals or ?

It might help if you said what you intended to do with it. If your goal
is simply to spend $6000 on a CCD just pick one at random.

As a matter of fact that choice should have been the first one,
defining the pixel scale, angular size covered, sensitivity and such,
but brainless people tend to heed no attention to these trivial
details. I'll suggest dart throwing as a mean to select the suitable
imager. If this fails then a 9mm ploessl will do just as fine, I
suspect.

I would suggest you build the scope a permanent weather proof shelter
before buying any more sexy sounding kit.

Sure, so it will never thermally equalize, although I doubt it will
make any difference.

Cheers

Andrea T.

skrev i en meddelelse
oups.com...
I suggest you google up SBIG and Apogee and puruse their offerings.

I also, humbly, suggest you supply more budget if you want the 'best'.


I meant best suitable for this telescope, my interest goes in coulorfull
beautifull nebula images, deepsky images and a little bit planetary (not my
prime focus area) and my hope is i'll be able to do more in galaxy areas
too, not so much in the more scientific photometry
at least not for now, i need more experience in that field

But if you suggest more budget, i might add some more, but refuse to maybe
spend 2000 - 3000 $ more if theres really no visable difference

Greetings from starman
- a huge fan of the universe - a great invention i might add ;-)

Starman wrote:

I read my original posting, and when i did that i became very clear that i
must have been sounding like a spoiled kid or worse, maybe a troll ;-)

You still do. But on the off chance that you are genuine the best advice
would be to get a relatively small cheap but fast monochrome CCD camera
first and learn with that. You can re-use it for autoguiding later.

Wait until you know what you actually want the camera to do before
buying an expensive mistake. One shot colour astro cameras with large
cooled CCD pixel arrays are only just becoming available.

A lot of the serious work uses large monochrome cameras and filter
wheels. It all depends what you want to do.

No i'm not that rich, just lucky (i won some money in lotto)

You will burn through $1000000 quite easily with just 30 similarly ill
informed impulse buys. Expensive gadget salesmen must love you.

And i have for about 2 years been dreaming of buying a huge telescope, my
most expencive so far has been around 1200 $
so this is a huge step for me in preformance

There is no rush. It will take a fair while to get to grips with using
the telescope - and you can always do film astrophotography first.

Regards,
Martin Brown

wrote:


As a matter of fact that choice should have been the first one,
defining the pixel scale, angular size covered, sensitivity and such,
but brainless people tend to heed no attention to these trivial
details. I'll suggest dart throwing as a mean to select the suitable
imager. If this fails then a 9mm ploessl will do just as fine, I
suspect.



I'll never forget a guy who showed up at our observing
field one night. Had an AP 155, AP 900, and an almost
complete line of Naglers, and Panoptics.
First thing he said, is "Can someone show me how to
use this stuff" A couple of out club's refractor
owners helped him setup, gave him a some pointers, and
tried to help him out. My impression was that he wasnt that
impressed with what he was seeing. It was obvious that he
had done NO research, and or looking at information before
he got the equipment at all.
I hope he hung on to the gear and at least *tried* to learn
about it more, though none of us ever saw him again....





--
AM

http://sctuser.home.comcast.net

CentOS 4.2 KDE 3.3

Starman wrote:

I meant best suitable for this telescope, my interest goes in coulorfull
beautifull nebula images, deepsky images and a little bit planetary


Hi

If this equipment is all new to you, the best advice one
can give you is to NOT attempt any deep sky photography
for a while to come. It takes lot's of learning, lots of
expirence, and even more patience. You first need to get
used to polar aligning for your permanent installation,
making sure about the orthanigality of your OTA and mount,
controlling tracking and PE, and most importantly, how
to prepare for, take and process pictures.

As another poster mentioned, you should have figured out what
you want to take pic's of, what size camera (pixel array)
will give you what you want, and then to match the optics to that.

To put it another way. Tale a look at some of the really
good websites out there, and how these people took their pic's
You could actually follow their directions to the letter
and STILL come out with crap. There is just soo much to this.

Never forget, the equipment dosnt take pictures YOU DO !


That said, the only way you will ever learn is to jump in




--
AM

http://sctuser.home.comcast.net

CentOS 4.2 KDE 3.3