[Chaos-l] New List Member

[Fred File]

Hello All,  I am new here.  Joined the list yesterday and will hopefully join 
the club at the next meeting (August 9, I believe).

I have had a long time interest in Astronomy but never really had the time or 
money to get into it seriously.  Well I have retired and have some funds for 
equipment to sort of test the waters and see how serious I want to get about 
this as a hobby.    I have come here looking for advice.

I want to buy a telescope and can probably put $2,000 into it at this time.  My 
ultimate goal would be astrophotography and asteroid hunting.  I realize this is 
something of a tall order for $2,000 but with my first purchase I would hope to 
get a solid 8" SCT with a Goto mount and accessories.  I would get a photo 
adaptor for my Nikon DSLR (D300) and hopefully that would be enough to get me 
started.  Essentially learning the skills and techniques to get the most out of 
that equipment.  If I don't prove to be the "old dog" that can't learn new 
tricks I would probably upgrade to a bigger SCT and a CCD camera if my 
enthusiasm did not wane in a year to 18 months.

Looking at Telescopes.com I see a number of setups that would seem to do what I 
want but I don't really know which is the best option for the money and 
hopefully some of you will have some advice.

Celestron offers 3 8" Goto SCT packages that might work.  The cheapest is this - 
NexStar 8 SE Telescope Bundle for $1229.  My concern here is the single fork 
mount.   I can't imagine this has the stability I want for good astrophotography 
(some of the reviewers mention it.)

They also offer an 8" SCT package with a dual fork mount (Celestron 8 Inch CPC 
Limited Edition Telescope) for $1749 and an 8" SCT with a German Equatorial 
mount (Celestron CGEM 800 Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope) for $2199.  With 
accessories this one would probably get to around $2500 but when I upgrade I 
could just buy a bigger OTA.  The CPC unit also might require a $360 wedge for 
astrophotography.

For the high end Celestron units I would be approaching the 8" Meade LX200 price 
so if there is a great difference I would start looking closely at the Meade 
lineup.

Here are the links to the items above:
http://www.telescopes.com/telescopes/catadioptric-telescopes/celestronnexstar8setelescopeultimatepackage.cfm


http://www.telescopes.com/telescopes/catadioptric-telescopes/celestron8inchcpclimitededition50thanniversarytelescope1.cfm


http://www.telescopes.com/telescopes/catadioptric-telescopes/celestroncgem800schmidtcassegraintelescope1.cfm


http://www.telescopes.com/telescopes/catadioptric-telescopes/meade8inchlx200acfadvancedcomafreetelescopewithuhtcstandardtripod.cfm


Hope I am not to pushy for a newcomer but any help you guys could give would 
certainly be appreciated.

c h e e r s
fred
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://rtpnet.org/pipermail/chaos-l/attachments/20110722/d3c70de9/attachment.html>