The Ultimate Travel Rig

I bought my Tak FS60cb  second hand and  paired with a no longer produced and relatively cheap Borg x0.7 super reducer. New the Tak FS60cb with it’s dedicated reducer costs £1173. Probably the best travel scope out there but not budgety . If you swap the scope for the bargain Sky Watcher 72ed then the whole set up becomes very affordable whilst also being very powerful. Heads up this set up works best with a mono camera because mono cameras gives more resolution than colour cameras (its to do with the bayer matrix) which means you need to buy a filter wheel and filters too.

Inspired in part by the smart telescope Stellina and refined through experimentation the ultimate biscuit travel rig is powerful and relatively cheap but to get this set up singing calls for a high level of geekery. Before I guide you through the theory of what makes this rig  good, lets lay out the blue prints so you can see what she’s made of.

The Telescope

Don’t be fooled by the size, small scopes like this pack a massive punch.

Takahashi FS-60CB f/5.9 Doublet Fluorite APO Refractor OTA

The Tak FS60CB has a fluorite crystal front lens which reduces colour fringing making this scope ‘tak’ sharp. If you combine it with the dedicated reducer you get a fast (F4.2) sharp scope capable of resolutions of about 2 arc seconds which just happens to be the resolution of the mount (we measure mount wobble in arc seconds too) its all part of what makes this such a good little astrophotography set up. Everything is in balance. You might want to spend a bit less money on the scope though. According to optical expert Es Reid the below are very good although I’ve not actually used them.

takahashi DF-60CB

I’ve got one of these!

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Reducer/Corrector

(expensive but very good)

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Alternative Scopes

Great value

Sky-Watcher Evostar 72ED DS-Pro OTA

This is the best value ed glass small scope there is although full disclosure I’ve not yet used it. I have used some other small ed refractors and been disappointed with them. Es Reid says  Sky-Watcher are now able to produce very good scopes at a very good price. In fact this one has been recommended to me by a number of nerd I trust. Its small so can be mounted on the AZ-GTi , and Star Adventurer GTi although I’d recommend the Sky-Watcher EQM-35

skywatcher 72ed telescope

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skywatcher reducer corrector

Reducer/Corrector

(optional but recommended)

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Super sharp

William Optics v2 RedCat 51 (or 61 or 71mm) APO f/4.9

Es Ried is very impressed with this little scope. It’s VERY sharp. Its like a 250mm F4.9 lens but its sharper because instead of being made up of about 9 separate lens elements with an internal focusing mechanism its got just 4 with two of the elements being made out of exotic fluorite-like glass. Having so few lenses reduces problems of internal reflections and scattering and its Petzval design (which is used in the best widefield imaging refractors by Takahashi and Tele Vue) combined with exotic glass to remove colour fringing makes this one of the best widefield astrographs available. Its perfect when paired with a full frame DSLR camera and can be used with the dinky little Watcher Star Adventurer , AZ-GTi , and Star Adventurer GTi mounts. Plus you don’t need to buy a reducucer/corrector lens as the field is beautifully flat right out of the box.

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STOP PRESS:

The Redcat now comes in two larger sizes. 61 and 71mm. The 71mm looks to be terrific value and it is still light enough to work on my lightweight travel mount although I’d recommend the slightly bigger Sky-Watcher EQM-35.

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The Mount: Sky-Watcher Az-GTI

Getting a sharp telescope is only half the battle because the sharpness of your telescope also depends on your mount. I talk a bit more about how to choose a good mount here. For this rig I am using the best value small mount there is on the market but before you grab one beware because you need to hack this mount to get it to work properly. For a couple of hundred squiddles more you can purchase a better mount which works out of the box.

PROs

  • Cheap
  • Surprisingly good at tracking especially in eq mode (less than 2 arc seconds wobble when guiding).
  • Super Portable
  • Has GOTO function via phone app
  • Can connect to a computer via wifi allowing the use of serious and powerful astrophotography software like Nina

CONS

  • Is intended as an ALT AZ Mount. In order to make it work in EQ mode you need to install firmware and cobble together a suitable mount which can be polar aligned. Brief description here
  • No polarscope
  • Need to acquire counterwieght and counterweight shaft.
  • Complicated
  • Can only carry small scopes
  • Needs a sturdy tripod. The Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Tripod isn’t sturdy enough.

Under $300

Sky-Watcher Az-GTI

An extremely powerful, little and affordable mount (but its a bit geeky).

az gti mount

(Wobble 2 (ish) arcseconds)

I LOVE the Sky Watcher Az-GTI mount  (I talk about this mount here). You can control GTI via wifi through an app on your phone or on your laptop.To really make this mount sing you have to align it with the rotation of the earth. That means buying some kind of wedge and counterweights and installing a firmware update which allow it to work in eq mode. So you have to be quite geeky to get the best out of this mount. And the problems son’t end there…this mount lacks a polar scope and suffers from really bad backlash in dec which doesn’t have a huge impact on the wobble but makes setting everything up MUCH harder. So beginners be warned you might want to get the more expensive but easier to use Star Adventurer GTI

AZ GTI Mount comes as an Alt Azimuth mount.

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You find the same shafts and counterweights on the old eq1 mounts 

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You’ll need some kind of wedge to convert the AZ GTI Mount into an equatorial mount. 

Generic wedge

The Skywatcher AZ GTI mount doesn’t have a polar scope, so after an initial rough alignment – simply by angling the mount to 52 degrees( which is my latitude in London) and pointing it North – I then use sharpcap software‘s polar alignment tool along with an adjustable wedge or tripod of some kind to align the mount to the rotation of the earth to with an accuracy of about  1 arc minute. Having a good quality adjustable wedge really helps you get excellent polar alignment… I actually use an old Meade deluxe field tripod instead of this  cheap wedge from skywatcher which is really designed for low focal lengths where you don’t require very accurate polar alignment. I actually sometimes get everything close with this wedge and then adjust the tripod rather than the wedge to polar align more precisely. 

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William Optic’s wedge

Skywatcher ‘s little adjustable wedge  isn’t very precise but with a bit patience it does work.  William Optic’s wedge is more expensive but from what I can see and the glowing reviews I can safely say its much better than Skywatcher’s offering although heads up I’ve never actually used it.

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Star Adventurer GTI 

 Skywatcher have just brought out the Star Adventurer GTI which I am confident will be even better than the modified AZ-GTI above.  I’d get this if you can afford it. It is nearly twice the price of the AZ-GTI mount though. I suspect Sky Watcher didn’t realise the power of the AZ-GTI in EQ mode or they wouldn’t have released the firmware hack for this inexpensive mount for free. Anyways the Star Adventurer GTI has a polarscope which makes it easier. I haven’t used it. I’m sure it’ll be good because all sky-watcher mounts are excellent but I would be surprised if it was as amazing as the EQM-35 which is a bit less portable and a bit more expensive. 

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The Camera

The final most important part of the ultimate travel rig is the camera. A small pixel camera combined with a sharp scope is able to achieve similar resolutions to much larger scopes. You do need to spend longer shooting because small scopes catch less photons BUT as this is a travel scope I’m betting you’ll more than make up for that disadvantage by shooting from a beautiful dark location. BTW you could of course use any camera with this set up. Most modern cmos sensors have small pixels which will work well althought he camera I’ve chosen has particularly small pixels. I have a list of other cameras I really like here.

ZWO ASI 178MM

The   ZWO’s asi178mc or asi178mm. This is a very fine lunar, solar and planetary camera can also be used for deep space astrophotography. To be honest the credit for choosing this camera really goes to the roboscope Stellina  although I had run a few tests on the imx178 sensor a few years before. The colour version is fantastic  but for extra flexibility and performance you’ll need the mono version.

Cooling: I have made a peltier cooler for my asi178. You can see it in action in this VIDEO There was a time when you could buy a cooled version of this camera but sadly no more.

Fantastic Value

asi178m astronomy camera
  • Very Good Value
  • 2.4um pixels
  • Low read noise 1.4e per pixel
  • 14mm  diagonal sensor
  • Versatil
  • mono

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See Also…

  • Best Value Telescope for Astrophotography

    Best Value Telescope for Astrophotography

  • Your First Astrophotography Rig

    Your First Astrophotography Rig

  • Incredible Budget Telescopes

    Incredible Budget Telescopes