An 8” Telescope Has MORE Potential Than You Think!

[@MountainFisher]

Aperture is one thing and mirror quality is another, it is why many like Maksutovs for planetary, easier to make mirrors with longer focal lengths. Your 127 SLT was a Maksutov, I have one. It is the exact same one as the Skywatcher 127 MCT, just a different paint job and both made by Synta who owns Celestron and Skywatcher, I have both. Just a heads up and you can put a 2" diagonal on it if you want to. So I bought a C6-N reflector at a pawn shop for $125, the owner knew little about optics because he bundled it with a TeleVue 2x Barlow and didn't clean the lens with paper towels and Windex like the mirrors on the Newtonian. Mirror was covered with micro-scratches and he didn't put it back in right anyway. So off to Optical Wave Labs to be recoated to 96% reflectivity and was on sale for $88 including the secondary mirror which usually was $25 extra. They measured my mirror and said it was a decent mirror and it was a prime candidate for a refigure to bring it out to 1/10th wave and .95 Strehl for another chunk of money. I was feeling like I was being sold a bunch of options I didn't need, but a club member told me they did his 203mm mirror and it came out great at just what they guaranteed. I ended up at 1/12th wave and .98 Strehl with 1.00 being perfect. It will take unbelievably sharp photos of the planets out to its physical limits. I use it for splitting stars out to its limit of 13.4 stellar magnitude, it goes past that, but it cannot resolve well anything dimmer. It will show a 13 magnitude star as a sharp point with a tiny airy disc, but a 14 mag star is a blur (some star systems go past that with 3 or more stars). The planets on a good seeing night here in Southern New Mexico in dark skies is unbelievable. I've taken Saturn/Jupiter up to 300x on a cold still night with a calm transparent stratosphere, but atmospheric aberration was still apparent, but I videoed it as it went in and out of perfect focus. Uranus is naked eye visible under really dark sky, Bortle one to two at 5.3 to 6.00 mag. I watched it for an hour collecting data, but still a dark planet. It wasn't recognized as a planet until the 1700s, though many throughout history saw it like Ptolemy or Hipparchus in 128 BC. John Flamsteed recorded it in 1690 as star 34 tauri.

[@crateer]

Why haven't I found your videos way earlier? Very cool, keep it up!

[@tkern2]

Great video. Love this kind of content. I subbed and look forward to more. Only thing I would say is to slow down a bit when you talk sometimes 🙂 rooting for you. You’re definitely knowledgeable enough

[@AstrophotographyQuest]

Thanks! Yeah I notice that sometimes too lol but I’m going to work on that.

[@aaronciviris]

your pace is perfect. I am a Spanish speaker.. and I understand you perfectly . Awesome video.👌

[@jokerace8227]

Having owned a 130mm Newt, a 150mm Mak, a C8, a CF C11 and currently a 12" Newt, I think of 8" as the ideal size for a first mirror type telescope. Focusing, especially at high magnification for planet observing, is tough, and often at an inland location such as Idaho, the scintillation effects of the jet stream overhead makes it impossible to get a good focus. Don't immediately blame the telescope's optics quality, for those who are new to it. It's most likely the atmosphere overhead is too turbulent. Also, this 12" Dob Newt I have now flexes somewhere in it's structure ever so slightly at when repointing to different elevations, which slightly throws off the collimation. Good collimation is crucial to getting to a good focus. The CF C11 also suffered a little bit from a shift of the primary mirror cell at different elevation angles, but the C8 didn't noticeably have that sort of issue. So there's also that added complication as you move to larger telescopes.

[@netwolfstar]

Agreed after trying for years one night with good seeing blew my away with my C8. Its just you need to get out there and bang away also check your collimation. Mine is a older C8 with Starbright coatings and previous owner had flocked the scope. There is animation of it on youtube.

[@richardwarren1718]

You have to luck up on those special crystal-clear, motionless, atmospheric skies. When you do, recognize that blessing. Here along the forty-second parallel we do the best we can with what we've got. A cold, crisp winter night and Sirius, M41 and the triples to the left were like a few blocks over. Or a Northern Taurid fireball streaking across Auriga early one November day. Once again🔭❤.

[@star_titan]

How can I achieve perfect focus btw I use a Celestron Astromaster 114eq and the focusing knob is really bad so can you please suggest ways to achieve perfect focus

[@AstrophotographyQuest]

If you mean planets, I just tend to focus until the details on the planet look sharp and where the most details appear. Though in bad seeing, I may have to focus on a star by making it the smallest possible size.

[@cormacbyrne9655]

Hey thanks for the tips here. I was thinking of getting the SKYWATCHER SKYMAX 180 PRO OTA telescope and anEq6 mount. Would you recommend that combination. Or a celestron? I see you feel the camera to get would be the ZWO ASI678MC What would be your views on those please? Thank you.

[@TiberiusWallace]

Tbh it's focal length that's king in planetary

[@abhisheknamdeo]

That background music

[@vitalieBu]

Hi! I just got as a gift a used 12" Meade LX200 CLASSIC. The electronics are being repaired. I also have a 14" Dobsonian with no tracking... maybe I'll get it fixed soon. I never owned a dedicated astrocamera ... what would you recommend for moon/planetary and maybe some DSOs. Thank you!

[@AstrophotographyQuest]

I have the ZWO ASI178MM and it does pretty well for planets and some DSO (I used it a few times on M51) but it’s monochrome and it takes a ton of time and work. The new best planet camera in my opinion is the ZWO ASI678MC which is the new color version of that lineup. Plus it has a much higher resolution for DSO’s than cameras like the ASI662MC. There are lots of other options out there but that’s just what I prefer. But for DSO ONLY it is best to get a cooled camera. But those generally won’t work well for planets, so that’s why a 678 would do really well (and no amp glow on the 678 either) for some deep sky here and there and for planets.

[@johncooper9746]

kool

[@whitekingcat5118]

bruh an 8" is way way WAY better than my telescope. Focal length of 1200 mm focal length, wtf??? That is insane. My only has 650 mm focal length :(. I only see planets as white dots

[@AstrophotographyQuest]

If your telescope can handle it you could always use a Barlow lens to increase focal length :)

[@05.aishiqmishra4]

Does a 6" ?

[@AstrophotographyQuest]

Oh yes! I had a Celestron 127SLT (5”) and boy did it do well! It just depends on seeing mostly and what resolution you want out of it.

[@05.aishiqmishra4]

@@AstrophotographyQuest well I have a manual 6" is it still.. ok??

[@AstrophotographyQuest]

Well it helps to track, but it can still turn out just as good. It just takes a bit of extra work and movement "manually".

[@05.aishiqmishra4]

@@AstrophotographyQuest I see just move the telescope everytime so object is at the edge of the eyepiece

[@jokerace8227]

@@AstrophotographyQuest Yeah, the other thing is that smaller apertures aren't affected as much by atmospheric scintillation. While there are cheap little Right Ascension motors that can be adapted onto many German Equatorial mounts, the one I tried on the 130 mm Newt GEM added vibrations, which was a problematic for imaging planets with a CCD camera. lol

[@user-fz3zz6ld8j]

planet lol freemason gate keeper jupiter is a live living star

[@bussi7859]

Get a girlfriend, if you can