CM1400 / CI700 System

I traded in the LX200 system because I wanted a longer focal length scope with a larger aperture. I also had begun to believe that the Meades just were not quite up to par for CCD imaging. I am not sure that belief is actually justified, but that is what I was thinking at the time. I knew that giving up GOTO for the mechanical setting circles of the CI700 was going to introduce new challenges. I ended up buying the Digital Setting Circle encoder kit from Celestron. I mated it up with the NGC Max Sky Vector from Lumicon to finish the DSC system. The next problem was to replace the finderscope with an upright image finder to make correlating star charts to what I see in the finder look the same. I purchased an ASTRO finder secondhand from a friend. The ASTRO was a big help because the orientation of the stars in the finder matched those in my starcharts rather than being a mirror image. I fought the CI700 for a few months, managing only to take a couple of "decent" images. I was really getting frustrated and knew I had to get another mount. I really wanted an AP1200GTO but thought I'd never find one, but then I found on on Astromart. The difference between the mounts was striking. Go to CM1400/AP1200GTO System

Celestron CM1400 with CI700 mount using SBIG ST7E NABG CCD camera and CFW8 Color Filter Wheel

What I shot with this system Object                  focal ratio M13                          f/11 M51 (composite)    f/11 M57                          f/11

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