telescope thread

A few years ago, I bought an SBIG ST-7XME-D which I have used with limited success with my high school students and our 20 year old Celestron Ultima 2000. The Celestron is in need of refurbishing. I've never collimated it to my satisfaction, and the gearing no longer engages precisely or accurately.

Alternatively, we could purchase a new telescope. My question is if you would have recommendations on a good purchase that would work well with the camera. Through fundraising from various sources, I'm guessing our budget would be about $10,000. We have an observation platform with mounting piers at the remote corner of our campus, but no observatory and not the greatest seeing or transparency. In other words, with limited budget and facilities, we are looking for something we could store, bring out, align and set up, observe and put away in one night, rather than something that would remain permanently mounted and aligned. It would be nice if it's portable enough to take to another location to observe as well.

Last year, we measured the eccentricity, semi-major axis and period of the moon's orbit. This year, our project is to measure the astronomical unit as accurately as possible through our own measurements. We have also taken astronomical photographs of various solar system objects, but never been successful with deep space objects. I am a physics teacher, with an interest in astronomy but lack an extensive academic or amateur astronomy background. I'm basically learning along with my students. That hopefully gives some idea of our capabilities and the range of uses we are looking at.

I would appreciate any advice on whether its worth refurbishing the Ultima 2000 vs. purchasing a new telescope, and what you might recommend for a new scope that would interface well with the camera.

Thanks,

Matt

 

Thanks for the advice. I am not sure about the optics of our current tube from the Ultima 2000. Its an SCT, and I have never been able to successfully collimate it. I can never get rid of all of the asymmetric flaring. Should I be able to perfectly collimate it, or are there some limits to what I can do? If so, are the limits to what I can do related to SCT's, or to the Ultima 2000 in particular? If it weren't for the collimation issues, the optics is otherwise still pretty good.

If I did replace the tube, do you have recommendations to get me started looking?

As far as mounts, what makes the Software Bisque mount superior to the similarly-sized SkyWatcher? I have no problem needing to control it with the laptop computer, and in fact prefer that.

Matt

 

If you are going to be doing most of your work using the camera rather than visually I would recommend something like a Tele-Vue NP101-is and an Astro-Physics Mach 1 GTO mount. You can capture a lot of really faint objects with relatively short exposure times and then display them on the computer screen for the whole class to see. Unless you get a really big scope, most deep sky objects look rather disappointing to students when they look at them through an eyepiece.