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I don't have a ton of money to spend on this hobby, and Astrophotography is a VERY expensive hobby. When I started getting into this, I cut some corners. I am one of those people who has a lot of patience. I have a lot of persistence in trying to get the stuff I bought to do what I thought it should do. Well, the bottom line is, sometimes, you don't even get what you pay for. Some things just don't work. Here are some of my experiences. Hopefully you won't be as stubborn as I was, and take a few tips... LX-50 Telescope I started out with a 60mm refractor like just about everyone else. I wanted more out of the sky. I spent some time researching what type of telescope I wanted, and I settled on a Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope. I have always liked Meade products, so I looked at the LX series. The LX-10 just didn't seem to have enough to it, but was priced good. The LX-200 was awesome, but was out of my price reach. The LX-50 looked like a great compromise- decent price, a bit more sturdy than the LX10, and had more guiding speeds than the LX10. I was also interested in doing astrophotography, and Meade listed it as an astrophotography-capable scope. Being one of those stubborn "old school" stargazer (even though I had only been doing it for a few years), I was in the frame of mind (not exactly sure why) that starhopping somehow was more impressive than Go-To. I mean, I guess it is, and it's a very important skill to have, but truth be told, I'd rather be looking at the object or taking a picture of it than looking for it. So, GO-TO wasn't on my list. I was told by the guy at the camera shop that there was little difference between the LX50 and the LX200, and that I could always upgrade it to GOTO with the Magellan II controller. Well, that's all I needed to hear. I got the LX50. I will pause right here and say that I loved the LX-50. It really is an awesome telescope. The optics are excellent, it has a sturdy fork arm assembly, and it's well built. But an astrophotography telescope the LX-50 is NOT. I started out doing the basic photo mistakes like trying to guide without a crosshair reticle (I mean, I actually tried to keep the star centered in the OAG eyepiece, thinking this was sufficient). I finally figured that one out, got some more experience, and did a lot of research (God bless the Internet), and I was doing everything I knew to do. The 8" LX50 and standard wedge (got a whole other story about the wedge) are not sturdy enough when they have a whole bunch of equipment hanging off the back, even with a counterweight set. A few well-known issues with the LX-50 are: noisy dec motor, no Periodic Error Correction (PEC), horrible latitude adjuster, and some other stuff. These things are of no concern unless you are doing astrophotography. To fix them, I tried the Jordan Blessing (scopetronix.com) dec fix kit. This is a set of gears that change the ratio to make it more powerful, hence a quieter motor. It works like a charm. Can't do anything about the PEC. The latitude adjuster story- I'll hit that in a second. Oh, and as for being able to do go-to with the Magellan II- guess again. The controller has less objects in it's database (minor detail), but since the LX-50 doesn't have slew capabilities (you have to unlock the RA or DEC locks and mannually slew the scope around (truthfully much faster than the LX200), and then when the encoders read that you're "close" to the object, you lock the dec and RA locks, and hit find, and it will move to that object. It's nowhere near as acurate as the LX200's goto, and you have to continuously fix the dec adjuster because you're supposed to keep it in the center of the shaft (Right Assention can go around forever, but Dec has about a 3" movement). I think what Meade meant by this scope being astrophotography-capable is that you can shoot photos of the moon and planets. Long exposure, Deep sky objects are not good candidates for the LX-50. I know I'm jumping around here a bit, but since I'm still on the topic of the LX-50, I'll just finish by saying I ended up buying a 10" LX-200 to fix a lot of the problems I had. The LX-200 has PEC, it has a more powerful drive system, and more sturdy forks. Also, as for the not wanting Go-TO- this turned out to be one of the best things about the scope. I really enjoy not having to spend a half-hour or longer trying to locate objects. It saves time- time I could be spending enjoying the objects. The extra 2" of aperture helps too! Meade Standard Wedge The standard wedge that you get with the LX-50 is not so good. For starters, it's not very sturdy- especially when it has a scope with a lot of weight on it. When I would tap on the OTA, it vibrated like a tuning fork for what must have been 20-30 seconds. The latitude adjuster is a joke. click here to see what they give you (it's the little brown thing on the left side). Notice that it's only on one side? When you do an adjustment with the scope on top of it, it actually twists the wedge, causing drift alignment problems. To fix it requres a device called the "real latitude adjuster", created by Jordan Blessing (scopetronix.com). Click here to see a photo of this device. It makes doing latitude adjustments much easier. My answer to the standard wedge? The Meade SuperWedge. This wedge is much more sturdy, and has much better latitude and azimuth adjuster. This wedge is excellent. I'm told that the Milburn wedges are better, but they're also $100 more expensive. Because I have my wedge permanently mounted in an observatory, on a concrete pier, I don't have as much need to move these settings, but I would not want to make them on a standard wedge with a 10" LX200 sitting on top of it. Rather than making a bunch of links to the photos, just Click Here (will open in a seperate browser window) to see a detailed write-up I did about the differences. That document was written to explain the differences between the holes that you mount a standard wedge vs. a superwedge. That's a whole other story. Off-axis Guider, Focal Reducer & Deep Sky Filter I should start by saying that I first tried not using an off-axis guider. I bought an 80mm short tube refractor and mounted that on top of the LX-50. The problem with that is, the focal length of one of those is 400mm. For an acurate photo, you need at least half the focal length of your main OTA, which in this case was 2000mm. Even with a barlow lens on the 80mm, it was 800mm, too short. The photos were horrible, and you're really limited on guide stars unless you want to mess with the little thumb screws of the tube rings. I had a 4" maksutov cassegrain scope (see the photos above- the red scope), and it was too heavy. There was bad flexure. So, I was told Off-axis guider is the best way to guide a shot on a Schmidt Cassegrain scope because of the mirror shift. I hade a Meade Off-axis Guider (OAG), and it was very basic- no moving parts. It was literally a radial guider. Finding a good guide star meant having to search, in a circle around the perimeter of whatever I was trying to shoot, and sometimes sacrificing the quality of the photo framing. The Meade OAG does not let you rotate your camera independently from the eyepiece holder, so you have to locate your object, focus, get it into the FOV for the camera, then search for the guide star (and if you have to search hard for it, you may be turning your photo frame sideways). AND, if you end up in some weird position when you find a star, good luck actually keeping your head in that position while you guide a shot. The problem with the focal reducer and deep sky filter is, they need to be screwed in between the scope OTA (optical tube assembly) and the OAG. This means that even the guide stars you're using will be reduced, and dimmed by the deep sky filter. Trust me, it's difficult enough without them. I mostly shot f/10, and avoided moon nights and the southern sky (about 30° of my sky is washed out). Ok, so to fix this little issue, I bought a Lumicon Giant EasyGuider (GEG). This is an AWESOME device! Be forwarned, they're made for 10" and larger scopes. It will not work on an 8" scope. If you have an 8" scope, you'll need the Cassegrain Easyguider for them (or some other type of OAG). I've heard the Taurus tracker, and the Orion guiders are all good ones. The GEG allows you to rotate and/or move all of the parts independently. In fact, the eyepiece extension tube not only moves radially (independent of the scope and camera adapter), but it can also be moved forward and backwards to a degree so you can really move around to find a guide star. I will have some good photos of the GEG up shortly. Autoguiders I was under the impression that an autoguider would make my photos come out much better. Not to mention, I wasn't really fond of slouching over an eyepiece (or whatever position the OAG put me in). It's very easy to "lose" the guide star when you're manually guiding the shot. The human brain is capable of blocking out certain things from being seen. For instance, if you have those little red crosshairs, and a white star dot, and you're staring at them, if you focus on one or the other, your mind can actually block the other out. So, to do the guiding properly, you have to use averted vision (looking away from the object, and using peripheral vision). I was WARNED by users of the APML (Astro Photography Mailing List), and MAPUG (Meade Advanced Products User Group) that the Meade 201XT is not a good autoguider. I actually couldn't even find a site where they said they got the LX-50 and the 201-XT working together properly. But, since the price difference between the two was so much, I thought I could tough it out. Plus, I got it for $200. No matter what I did, I could not get that 201XT to work properly. It wouldn't guide for more than 2 or 3 minutes. Because you can't connect it to a computer, you can't even monitor it. So, since I saw some people with an LX-50 and ST-4 working, I finally coughed up the money ($650) for an ST-4. I hooked this one up to my LX-50, set on my task, and I STILL could not get it working. I tell you, my drift alignment was awesome- the star barely moved in 5 minutes, even with a barlow and 9mm reticle. The only thing I can think of is, either I had the settings all messed up (every time seems unlikely, since I followed a lot of recommendations, and did a lot of trial-and-error (mostly error) on my own. The ST-4 guided for a longer period of time than the 201XT, but still not much longer. Oh, I also called Meade, and they sent me a ROM upgrade and Dec motor, saying the updates to the ROM were related to autoguiders. No luck. I actually gave up on using an autoguider with the LX-50. I put the ST-4 away, and went back to manually guiding my shots. Crosshair reticles This one I could have kicked myself on. This was when I first bought my scope. I didn't really know what things cost yet. I saw an ad on astromart for a 12mm orthoscopic wired University Optics crosshair reticle. Sounds impressive to someone who doesn't know better. I paid $100 for it. The crosshairs were green (which disbands the belief that red is the only color for dark-adapted eyes), and there were only two lines. The 12mm wasn't enough power to do the job, and with a barlow, things were too faint. Plus, when it was working, I bumped the wire a few times, causing the image to shake. That was not fun! I bought myself a Meade 9mm wireless crosshair reticle. What a difference! And I only paid $95 for it! The power is higher magnification. There are two crosshairs, and you can move them along the X and Y axis, making it easier to lock onto a guide star. The wireless made it nice because I didn't ruin as many shots. Cameras All I can say is don't buy a Yashica! I was REAL new to astrophotography, and the only tips I read were, get an SLR (single lens reflex) camera that had a manual bulb release capability. So, I went on ebay and bought two Yashica cameras for $45 each. They were both junk. I used them for star trails, that's about it. Sold them back on ebay. Then I read some more, and found that if you get one that has a removable prism, you can either create a magnifier prism, or you can swap out the focus screen and get a brighter image. Well, I went back to ebay, and found one that fit the description- a Miranda. This was almost as bad. Yup, I could remove the prism and focus screen, but it was still a piece of garbage. I couldn't find any other focus screens, so that did me little good. My father-in-law is an avvid photographer. He's really big on Nikon, and was telling me all along, get an F or an F2. Well, I just couldn't part with my money. After all, I can get this stuff working.. phooey. He finally felt bad for me and helped me buy the F2. The Nikon F2 is an awesome camera. It's probably 20 years old, but it's also probably the #1 camera for astrophotography (that and the Olympus OM1). I found a right-angle finder adapter on ebay. This just gave you a better position to be able to look through the viewfinder. Problem is, it's another lens, and another mirror, thus bringing the light dimmer. Plus the eye relief on it is poor. Got rid of it. Then I got an eyepiece magnifier on ebay. This little gadget screws into the back of the prism, and does a 2x magnification of whatever you're looking at. This was ok, but 2x got me nothing. Sold it on ebay. Finally, I heard a few people on MAPUG and APML talking about converting a Peak 8x Lupe (the rectangle model) into a magnifier. I got out the dremmel tool, and starting grinding away. It actually fits really nicely into the prism socket, and really magnifies the view. That's a keeper. Now, to get the image brighter, I bought a Beattie Intenscreen Plus replacement focus screen for the F2. It's a very bright focus screen, and works awesome. I got the version with the etched circle and gridlines. They help to center your image. Now, with the Nikon F2, the Beattie Intenscreen Plus focus screen, and the Peak Lupe magnifier connected to the scope, I can actually find my objects, and focus well. The image through this setup is very bright. It's almost as good as looking through a cheap 25mm eyepiece. You can actually see the ring nebula, andromeda, orion neb, etc. throgh the camera! In addition to those things, the Giant Easyguider has the reducer lens (and filter port) that goes inside the unit, which gives you the added benefit of being able to have your reducer (in some cases) and your filtering done AFTER your pick-off prism, which needs to be as bright as possible. With the deep sky filter and focal reducer out of the way (filtered after the pick-off prism), I get a brighter, undistorted selection through the eyepiece extension tube. Ok, I'm done Ok, I guess my ranting is enough. I hope someone gets something good out of this. Granted, I'm not trying to talk you into buying the best stuff, but I can honestly say, I said to myself, "I know I can make this cheaper stuff work", and I did to an extent, but man, what a difference... The difference in money was definitely not worth the headaches I used to be dealing with. I'm not saying that everything is perfect now, but it's much better than before. |