Celestron
Ultima 2000
8" f/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope
I have acquired this telescope in April 2000 and am still in the process of becoming familiar with its use. This telescope has several advantages over other Schmidt-Cassegrains.
The encoders are configured so that the telescope maintains its star alignment even if the telescope is moved by hand. This feature isn't found on the Meade telescopes or even other Celestron telescopes.
The telescope is configured with Fastar optics: the secondary mirror is removable, allowing an SBIG ST-237 CCD camera to be installed in its place. This yields a very fast focal length of f/1.92 allowing CCD exposure times of only a few seconds on some of the brighter deep-sky objects.
The telescope doesn't sound like a coffee grinder when slewing to objects. This is something that isn't an issue with other Celestron telescopes, just the Meades.
I plan on using this scope as a platform for photography and CCD imaging. The image above was taken while doing some solar observing (see solar image here). The solar filter is a Thousand Oaks Type II glass filter. Updates to follow... (until then, more information on this telescope can be found on Celestron's website)
Follow this link if you'd like to see a few images from my first night's attempts at CCD imaging.
A neat feature of Software Bisque's "TheSky" program is the ability to control an Ultima 2000 (among other scopes). I've played with this a little and it seems to work very well. The main advantage to this set-up is that you have access to much more data than what is available in the Celestron computer. This means more objects (that are beyond the resolution capabilities of the scope) and more supporting/background information. Useful? Definitely, if you had a remote observatory and wanted to conduct observations from a separate location. This really sounds appealing on cold winter nights. I don't have an observatory yet...
