Kurt Lanes replied to the topic 'New Mexico Cosmos Observatory' in the forum. 3 years ago

Peter

I found your post here very interesting. Thanks for sharing. I live in North Albuquerque Acres at 5850ft which is Bortle Class 5 so I am probably near your location. Looks like maybe you are in Edgewood. I just got my PlaneWave CDK 12.5 two days ago and set it up on my CEM70EC.

 

 

I am thinking that it might be too much for the CEM70 and as I was expecting the scope is not really suitable for a portable setup. This leads me to  think I need a dome and a new mount. So I had a couple of questions that you might be able to give me some guidance on. Right now I am running Kstars on a Mac Mini at the mount which works well. My first question is how well does your dome automation work? I am assuming you bought the stock 2.2M rotation and shutter automation kit.

My second question is regarding your CEM120EC2. My CEM70EC has gotten some pretty good performance if I am careful in the polar alignment. I have found that the iPolar scope in the CEM70 is off by about 4 arc-minutes but I can get unguided exposures of 5 to 10 minutes at 454mm focal length. I have been using PHD2 for most of my guiding.
 

So I am wondering if you have anything to share on the unguided or guided performance of your setup. If I use my 0.66 reducer there isn't enough back focus to put in an OAG so I need to use a guide scope or go unguided.

My current equipment  setup is:

CEM70EC
PlaneWave CDK 12.5 2541mm with optional 0.66 reducer
Sagitta OAG w/ASI224MC
Sony A7R4

Thanks
Kurt








 

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