Classic Time Machine
The Celestron C8 Schmidt-Cassegrain is one of the longest running continuously produced telescopes in history. You can read more about it at this site and this one and even this one. So I won’t go into it too much here except to say the following:
- Mine has been removed from its Alt-Az fork mount (called “deforking”) and had a Losmandy mount plate added to the bottom
- A Vixen mount plate has been added to the top
- The official Celestron C8 1/4″x20 “piggy back” mount was added to allow a DSLR or other device to ride along on top
- The finderscope has been replaced with a red dot finder
- The manual focus knob has been removed so a JMI Focuser with hand controller (or USB controller) has been added
- The front corrector plate was removed, rotated, and put back on to match with the original factory alignment marks (someone, somewhere, somewhen, had rotated it 180 degrees)
Most of the images I’ve taken have used this Time Machine with a Canon 450D or Canon 80D DSLR camera attached, including the one to the right (Canon 80D). Only recently have I upgraded to dedicated astronomical cameras. The funny thing is, I like my old-school C8 so much that I got a second one. This one came with the Byers worm drive (my original fork had the “normal” clock drive on it), a Telrad, and the Advanced Astro Master digital setting circles computer. This one has also been deforked and had a Vixen mounting bar added to it, but it’s been put back on the Byers drive for now since I’m running out of mounts!
