Rich wrote:

Chuck,

If you wanted to get back to imaging, what mount would you recommend?

Rich, good question so lets leave this part out in the open. Funny you should ask. Just a couple of weeks ago I picked-up a slightly used 300mm telephoto lens on eBay, to shoot the comet/Pleiades encounter. Alas the weather gods had other plans :( But I do want to do some imaging when things warm-up, and still have the set-up I've been using for about eight or nine years. It's simply a small, no-name Japanese equatorial mount (purchased used) with clock drive and home-made electric declination. I added an aluminum plate in place of the stock tube-ring mount, with various holes drilled it to accommodate different camera/scope combinations. I use 2 Pentax 35mm camera bodies; one is ususally for wide-angle, the other telephoto or coupled to a small refractor for higher-powered views. The counterweight arrangement has some radial adjustment to allow more precise balancing and less strain on the motors. The whole thing is driven by a 30-year-old Astro-Physics drive corrector with an early autoguider option (though I never use the autoguider, too much fun guiding manually!). I currently use the Orion 5mm Plossl guiding eyepiece with a Rigel Systems Pulseguide; if you're guiding manually a pulsed reticle is the ONLY way to go. You can use much fainter guide stars and eye fatigue is considerably lessened. I have 2 complete sets of the Astro-Physics equipment since it's a dinosaur and no longer under warranty, though it's never given me a hint of trouble :) Many thanks to Roland Christen, a fabulous product for it's day, and I believe the very first commercial autoguider. This setup is good for imaging to about 500mm-700mm focal length, so it's not a planetary imaging platform, or much use for those tiny-blue-dot planetary nebulae. But for the average extended object it can do a good job, as well as solar and lunar photography. It is at it's best imaging comets and that was the primary reason I put it together in the first place. I set it up, cleaned, adjusted, & lubed it for the comet, it's still set up in the family room right now. Were I to re-enter the world of high-powered imaging, I'd use my old equatorial Astrola mount (1-1/2" shafts, electric drives) & either 6" or 10" Newtonian. As far as recommending a specific brand & model of a current commercial product...first determine what kind of imaging you want to do, since image scale can affect the required equipment, set a budget, then ask someone who does imaging similar to what you're interested in. Remember that something that does "everything" will do nothing well, you'll have to specialize a teeny bit if you want to do it right. The best "all-around" setup without breaking the bank is still probably the ubiquitous SCT, but go for a GEM instead of the compact fork, whick is more of a visual mount, too cantilevered and prone to vibration for my taste, and can have swing-through issues when used close to the pole. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? All your favorites on one personal page – Try My Yahoo! http://my.yahoo.com