Posts Made By: Tybee Evans

Apogee has a 90mm F 11.1 Objective listed for $85. You could replace it.

Jeff,

Something in the 30 to 40mm range is going to fix you up for wide angle. I’ve been using a Meade 32mm Super Plössl in my 80ED which gives about a 2.7 degree field. I had a 40mm Super Plössl but didn’t like the larger exit pupil. From my light polluted skies it made the sky background look blue instead of black. I recently upgraded to a BW-Optik 30-80 which will give about a 4 degree field. I can’t comment on it much as I haven’t got my 2” diagonal and have yet to be able to use it.

I also find something in the 18-20mm range very useful. I have a Criterion 18mm ASP (which is basically a Plössl) that has served me well in this range. I’ll probably upgrade it at some point to a wide field design. Possibly a 20mm Nagler.

For higher powers I use Orthoscopics. I find the higher quality eyepieces really show their stuff in the 80ED. I have Orthos from all manufactures and the premium Pentax and Zeiss Orthos which performed very similar to the Meade and Celestrons in my C8 and Meade 12 really show their superiority in the 80ED. It really takes better optics to benefit from these higher quality eyepieces. That being said you can pay about as much for a single high quality Pentax as the 80ED costs.

Very, very nice. The only ones I’ve seen better are by the guys using the expensive chilled cameras and individual L R G B exposures accumulated over many hours time (and also many mosaics).

You should be proud.

Gary,

Check http://www.dvdrhelp.com/

Tybee

Flint,

I think this scope deserves a nice driven equatorial mount. I’ve tried both and while it’s nice scanning with an Alt-Az I invariably want to switch to high power for a better look. I tried a telepod head and it worked very well but didn’t lend itself to changing eyepieces once a target was centered. It was also difficult to keep a target centered at 150x and above. I now have my 80ED mounted to my Super Polaris mount and find it to be rock steady. I have a TAK 2.8 Hi-Or and can push it up to 214x on the planets and Moon just fine.

Tybee

It sounds good to me. I'd like to have one, especially if it was threaded for 5/4 filters.

Alex, I took the CG-5 motors and mounted them in the Vixen housings. I used the mounting brackets from the Vixen motors so the holes would line up. I had to do a little filing inside the housings for the motors to seat properly. I also removed the phone jack connectors and used the DIN jacks in the Vixen housings. I used the Vixen clutches and gears only because the CG-5 gears were smaller diameter and wouldn’t mate with the motors once they were mounted in the Vixen housings. The CG-5 gears have 32 teeth; the Vixen gears have 40 teeth. Either will work fine as long as you keep a 1:1 ratio.

It’s worked very well visually but there’s a lot of backlash that would prevent any type of critical astrophotography. I think piggyback and webcam imaging would be fine.

Joe that looks great! It's going to look really nice when you get some chrominance to go with it.

I think that 80ED's a keeper.

Awesome!

Thank you Herb,

I’ve been enjoying Astromart since 1997 when it was Robert Fields. It’s just gotten better through the years. I’m looking forward to seeing these new improvements. Thanks for providing this service to us all. We are forever in your debt.

Tybee