Page 3 - Meade LX80 / 8" SCT

Well I decided to start off this new year (2013) by upgrading my telescope and mount. The Celestron 130SLT was a very good telescope that allowed me to learn much about Astrophotography, but I was pushing the scope to it's limit. I needed better equipment to be able to obtain the quality of images that I wanted.  After looking at many scope & mount setups, I decided to buy the Meade LX80 multi-mount that came with a 8 inch Schmidt–Cassegrain Telescope.

I liked that this mount could be used in either of three configurations, German equatorial, single OTA in alt-az, and dual OTA in alt-az. Setting up is quick and easy. I has computerized Go-To tracking and has a very sturdy tripod. I will use it mainly in German equatorial mode (GEM)  because this is ideal for astrophotography. Setting up and aligning this mount in GEM is a bit more complicated than the Celestron 130SLT, but it is getting easier the more I use it. At first this mount and scope performed exceptionally well but it soon developed a problem with the tracking gears. The mount suddenly stopped rotating & tracking left to right, but would function well up & down. I contacted Meade  Customer Service and they told me to send it to them for repairs. I did send it and it took them 3 weeks to get it repaired and shipped back to me. Now that I have my scope back, I need to test it out, so I went to my favorite dark sky site closest to Dallas. It is called Possum kingdom Lake State Park.  Here are some picture of all my equipment set up and ready for the sun to set.

You can see images taken with my Canon T3i / 600D Camera and Meade LX80 / 8" SCT here... Page 4 

Recently I purchased a new solar filter for my scope. It is a film filter made by Kendrick Astro Instruments. This particular filter is only to be used for imaging and not for visual use. Kendrick sells 

both visual and photographic filters. The nice thing about these filters is that they are very reasonably priced and they come with a built-in solar alignment finder. Very easy to use and it gives  great results.

I took some test images to this weekend using this solar filter in conjunction with some color filters to see which configuration works best. Here are some of the test images I took.

This image is using only the
Kendrick Solar Filter

This one is using the solar filter
 along with a yellow lens filter

This one is using the solar filter along
with a Grey Moon lens filter

My next 8" SCT accessory that I recently purchased is called a "DSLR Piggyback Mount". It is used to mount your DSLR camera directly onto the telescope tube. This allows you to use the telescope's mount tracking ability to be able to take long exposure images using your DSLR lenses for wide angle pictures. This is excellent for imaging large sections of the night sky with the Milky Way in full view. I like imaging the Milky Way because there is so much detail captured in the picture and seeing it tower over the landscape always is simply amazing.

 

You can see images taken with my Canon T3i / 600D Camera and Meade LX80 / 8" SCT here... Page 4 

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** After a year of working with the LX80 mount **
I have decided to give up on it

Feb. 26, 2014

This mount started out to be promising at first, considering that it was an upgrade from the Celestron 130 SLT, but after a year of struggling to get some accurate tracking for some decent astrophotography I have concluded that it is not possible to get exposures greater than 30 seconds using this mount. I only achieved 30 seconds twice, typically I could only manage to get 15 - 18 second out of it and 40% of the exposures were trash. I used this mount about twice every month trying to adjust my technique and learn its nuances but could not get better results. This was not a cheap mount so my expectations were a bit higher than 30 sec.

To top things off, now the mount is not aligning correctly. Starting about 2 months ago whenever I align the mount and scope to polar home position and try to do a 2 star alignment, the LX80 mount will slew about 90 degrees off the selected star. I have triple-checked the settings on the hand controller and the date, time, DST, and site location are all correct. And it is set on German Equatorial mode for LX80. I just cant figure out what is wrong. I pan on calling the Meade Service Center soon to see if they can help, but my faith is all but gone for this mount.

So I have decided to abandon this mount and purchase a better one. Did lots of research and asked several knowledgeable people and have decided on the iOptron IEQ30 mount.
Hopefully I will have better luck with this one. Will soon find out because it arrives today.