New Set

Assembled my first apochromatic refactor set for imaging/observing. My first telescope is a Celestron 70AZ (70mm, f10), an achromat telescope with a shaky tripod. I was not satisfied with it, so after about 3 years I bought a Celestron C90 Maxsutov OTA (90mm, f14). It was an improvement, but still its function was limited to planetary observation. After another 3 years, I learned that apochromatic telescopes are more mobile, easy to use, able to produce sharper image, and also great for photography, I decided I should get one. However, I was not a member of any astronomy associations or forums, so I didn't have much resources and, from a current perspective, made some mistakes when choosing my equipment.

Here are a list of objects in the photo with reflections. Blue means the object has served my purpose well. 

SharpStar 65Q ED: still using it. 

Sky Rover 50-210 guider scope: of high quality, but a bit heavy. Later traded it for a smaller scope. 

QHY5L-II-M: still using it.
T7C planetary/guiding camera: just another version of QHY5L-II-C. I was going to use it for deep sky imaging, which is really immature; although it might work with large telescope and short exposures. 

Plano 8mm and 3.5mm eyepieces: with 68-degree FOV, they provide high quality image, but are a bit heavy. The focal lengths are too short for my telescope, which is better for observing DSO than solar system objects. 

Celestron PL32 eyepiece: so-so in terms of quality; FOV is too narrow. 

Explore Scientific and TeleVue focal extender: of high quality, but my telescope's aperture is too small to use them for planetary imaging. 

Sky Rover 2" star diagonal: high quality, but no more useful for my set than a lighter, 1.25" one
Optolong 2" UHC-E filter: strongly recommended for observing deep sky objects! Really brings up the contrast of nebulae.

[Archived on 2018-05-28]