[sink]

I would say don't buy this -- but if you had $45k to spend on astronomy, you'd either be extremely passionate and know what you were doing, or you wouldn't care about that money.

Some of the fun of amateur astronomy is that you can take incredible pictures with cobbled together bits and pieces, and rigs are entirely upgradeable and modular. I don't think you can upgrade this thing at all. I don't think you can debug it, tweak it, or otherwise modify it. Hell, it has me to believe that Zicral or whatever brand name for 7075 aluminum is entirely impenetrable.

I've had a blast carefully selecting bits of equipment and incrementally upgrading my rig as I developed new skills.

Also, for $45k, I'd do a fuckload better than this thing. Holy shit would I do better than this thing. I bet I could get better space pictures with $10k than like 12 of these things stacked on top of each other. And if anyone wants to give me $10k, I will happily bet $45k that I can come up with a better picture than this thing.

If you're interested in starting with astrophotography, check out cloudynights.com, the warmest & friendly astronomy forum you could hope for. And the best part about it is -- it's not trying to rip you off!

If you're looking for the Craigslist of astro gear, check out astromart.com

And if you want to see some amazing space pictures by amateur astronomers who spent way, way, way, way less than $45k, check out astrobin.com

[madaxe_again]

I’m about $15k in the astro-hole, and it goes a long way - about the same spec as this all in all - 14” Schmidt-cassegrain, Moravian with the 16200, filter wheel, mount, and all the rest. It all started with a little 6” scope and a cheap colour cmos imager - but I don’t feel the need to go beyond what I have. Except maybe a solar scope. And maybe a better cmos imager than my noisy SLR for planetary stuff. And maybe a new observatory.

It’s worse than having a drug habit, sometimes.

I’m not the target market for this thing at all, but at least it’s a respectable telescope and camera combo - an awful lot of stuff in this category is laughable garbage.

[montag]

According to the website, you can at least upgrade the image sensor. But let's be real, this thing ain't really for the hacker/DIY scene.

[joelshep]

I think what you're paying for is minimized learning curve. If you actually want to invest the time and effort to learn the ropes, this isn't for you. If you want to go from "Whoa, look at those stars" to passable pictures with minimal effort, and you have a lot of disposable income, this is your rig.