Daniel makes an excellent point. That's a lot of money and time needed to watch an object on a monitor out in the boonies. I can see any object I choose on my 24" LCD computer monitor in the comfort of my home. I'd rather put the money into a big Dob and see the objects through the eyepiece, if I'm going to take the time and effort to drive out to the sticks. On 8/11/10, daniel turner <outwest112@yahoo.com> wrote:
Ray:
You ultimately run into the limits of you optical system, basically the aperture size and the focal ratio. I was out at Lakeside during the aurora watch last week and met a guy who seemed to have about the best rig I've ever seen.
It was a C11 nexstar with a hyperstar attachment replacing the secondary. This gave him a speed of f/2. He was using a video camera which is usually too weak for deep sky work but he was getting integration times of less than a minute. He showed me "live" pictures of M8 and M20 where the color of the nebulae was obvious. But he needed a lot of gear to pull it off. Generator, Laptop, CRT Video monitor (LCD just wouldn't work with his rig) and a big pickup to haul it all.