Posts Made By: Ivan Gastaldo

Beautiful shot Ivan! 8)

Mark, wonderful shot... ready for a postcard! 8)

FOggy, but Beautiful! 8)

Nicely done Gary! 8)
Maybe next time you'll want to try for MORE exposure time... but this is certainly a VERY GOOD start!

That's great for 5 seconds! 8)
Thank you for sharing! and keep it up!

SWEET shot Vince! 8)

Hello Phlllip, and welcome aboard! 8)

A BIGGER scope will grab more Light Pollution, but will also grab more Light from the object you are observing, so don't believe that Larger scopes are LIMITED in BIG CITY skies... that's just a MYTH many people still believe...

Astrophotography as mentioned in previous posts is something NOT to be taken lightly, and will cost LOTS of money if you want to do it seriously. I would recommend to get a GOOD scope for VISUAL use first, and then move to Astrophotography once you have acquired enough experience and KNOW what you want...

Now remember, a larger scope will be HEAVIER and BULKIER than a small one, so take that into consideration if you plan to move it around, or to put it in your car to go to a Dark Site... (but the views will be worth it!)

Larger scopes will excel at showing you DSOs, even while at the City (some DSOs will be just a smudge), but smaller scopes will have a HARD TIME showing even that at the same location... this due to smaller Light grasp.

For Planetary work, it all depends on your location's atmospheric conditions. If you are affected most of the time by the Jet Streams, then the larger scope will be limited to a bigger extent than the smaller scope, since it won't be able to be pushed as high as it could be, while the smaller one most likely will. (for example, a 10" could be pushed to a theoretical 500x (50x per inch) but due to bad seeing, you probably only will get to 200x-250x, while the smaller scope (let's say 5") could be pushed to it's max of 200-250x, so there's no huge benefit of a larger scope)(but detail in larger scope "could" still be better at that magnification due to more light/detail collection)

I particularly live in South Florida, and we are blessed most of the year with great Seeing, so having a smaller scope would limit my planetary observing, that's why i went with a 10" SCT, which is a good compromise in size/weight/performance.

Hope this helps a lil' bit...


Clear skies! 8)

Great shot Greg!
Wonderful star field behind the Nebula... 8)

Nice composition Christine... 8)

Hmmm, that's a tough one Daniel... (nice scope, by the way! 8) )
I'm not sure what other options would be there, besides changing the focuser assembly, or moving the primary mirror forward?

Lets hope some of our imaging gurus have some other answers...