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- Last week
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Endorse away buddy. If something is well built and good value for money, then share it around I say. Its handy to know because I'll be in the market mid next year for a portable mount or a wide field tracker to place a DSLR on. Ray
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Cheers for the info Tony. Perhaps one to keep in mind if I can ever afford to upgrade from my SW NEQ6. Shane
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Since getting into this hobby, I've moved through several mounts beginning with a Meade LX90 on a wedge, ETX125, Vixen SX Star Book, Celestron CGEM and now a iOptron CEM60, its been a frustrating journey but learned a lot along the way. My last durable mount was the CGEM with which I took many satisfactory images with guiding that allowed up to 15 minute sub frames on a pier mounted in my light polluted area of metropolitan Los Angeles, California, Pasadena actually. After about 6 years the CGEM movements were getting a bit sketchy and from time to time fount it had a mind of its own when trying to align it to the night sky. So I started looking about for a replacement. I settled on a portable light weight iOptron CEM25 for my lighter optical tubes. This experiment proved very successful with smooth opteration and exceptional guiding performance one aligned to the north celestial pole which was fairly easy with the given polar scope. I was so impressed with its smooth operation and ease of use, that I decided on replacing my pier mounted Celestron with its big brother, the CEM60. I had to have a new adapter block made to secure it to the pier, but once set up it has turned out quite well following a few pilot error hiccups. Pay attention to the owner's manual when plugging in the cables! I plugged my Starlight Express guide camera into a power outlet by mistake and seem to have fried the connection from it to the scope. A GPUSB cable and box from Shoestring Astronomy has become a very good work around so it now works great. I'm impressed with the smooth operation and guiding I have gotten with this set up as being ligh years ahead of my prior struggles. I don't like to endorse products because your experience might be quite different, but so far this has exceeded my expectations. I use a Celestron 9.25" SCT, Stellarvue 102SV refractor and Celestron 6" SCT on this set up. Its a bit too robust to balance m 66mm Williams optics refractor, which resides happily on the smaller CEM25P.
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A not so empty place in the sky! caught a lot of gnats there! Nice view!
- Earlier
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Impressive photo Prof. Ray
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will give it a try, and I might try with my short focal length 66mm refractor
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This is a composite negative B&W image of the Virgo/Coma galaxy supercluster region. There are 13 Messier objects in the frame. Can you find them all?? Greg
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lol, geesuz Tony! That is crazy. Can you believe how much energy is wasted by light going straight up. Anyway what about an East / West Veil mosaic? Ray
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SQM 18.10mag/arc/sec2 Brightness 6.5 mcd/m2 artif bright 6030ucd/m2 ratio 35.3 I'm about in the middle right of this view near the hill at right edge. quite a glow to overcome!
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Star spikes rotated a bit for obvious reasons (if you look at the original). Greg
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Nice work Prof. Ray
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Its amazing with that light pollution you can capture those filaments. Nice work mate. Incidentally, what are your LP levels there? Ray
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Procyon & Gomeisa with the Canon 200mm lenses - a 2-frame mosaic. Greg
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Western Veil NGC 6960, Stellarvue 102SV refractor, 10 exposures at 15 min each, QHY8L camera, iOptron CEM60 Mount, from Pasadena California, "Light Pollution Central".
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That looks awesome mate. Have you opened up the starlight express? Those types of plugs may come with fusable resistors which pop if connected to power. Worth opening up and having a fiddle if you are handy with some electronics. Sometimes it is just a visual inspection to locate a burnt out component. Ray
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I had a Celestron CGEM for about 8 years and it performed pretty well. Guiding graph was a bit jagged but within the first row of parallel lines on the graph. It also began to chatter when slewing so I decided to try an iOptron CEM60. I had gotten an iOptron 25P for portable imaging and was very impressed with the smoothness of the guiding and operation so I thought its big brother might be good. upon setting it up, by mistake I plugged my guiding camera into a power port. from there on I couldn't guide at all, so thinking the mount might have issues I sent it back to iOptron for repairs. They fiddled with it but found no problems and sent it back to me. I tried connecting the mount directly to the computer for guiding using a GPUSB box and PHD. Works fine and guiding is exceptional. They have a good polar alignment scope and illuminated rings to place Polaris in the right spot. Seems to be nearly perfect. I took the viel nebula using 15 minute subs for 10 exposures over a two hour and half period of time. all frames had perfectly round stars. guiding graph is attached in photo. So judgement is, its about as good as it gets for a mid priced mount so far, and super smooth operation. Not sure what to do with guiding though the camera to the mount as that doesn't work so I think I may have fried a circuit in my Starlight Express guiding camera, but it does send images tot he computer that I can use to guide using the GPUSB box and cables.
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I know this feeling. When I bought my C14 my Losmandy G11 couldn't guide. Took a year or two improving the gear boxes, motors, etc, until I finally took the plunge (a big plunge) and picked up an AP1600GTO. A good mount makes imaging enjoyable. Ray
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Geezuz! I'm not sweeping that up. Great capture of dark neb, which is actually quite a hard thing to resolve. Nice work Prof. Ray
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Lots of dust in there. Shane
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Very nice indeed. I wish I could afford to upgrade the mount, maybe one day. Thoughts on the Ioptron? Shane
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Not in Pasadena where we live, but along the coast about 50 miles away its horrific and smoke is everywhere. this area of the coastal plain has a history of burning to the sea when off shore winds pick up for centuries, but now people have populated the slopes so its dangerous. I was out of the imaging business for nearly six months after changing out my mount and getting the new one up to performing. when skies clear I hope to do more.
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I wanted to put a reprocess of this dusty region in Taurus on here - but it looked rubbish So here's the original. Greg
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16 Hours at Brimham Rocks timelapse
Radar replied to Paramount's topic in DSLR and CCD Astrophotography
Great video and the location looked very cool (Brimham Rocks). Ray -
Nice colour and filaments Tony. Are the fires anywhere near you? Ray
