Digital slr astrophotography

[Maximillion]

hi guys, i am thinking of buying a canon eos 300d, i was wondering if anybody has used this and if it is any good. also has it got a descent exposure time and can you leave the shutter open for long amounts of time. and also can you get good images of galaxies, nebulae, clusters and general deep sky objects whilst piggyback mounting ?

cheers

[Woody]

The Canon 300d will do the job. Just switch to Manual mode, set to Bulb and away you go. If you can get a Canon with the "Liveview" feature it will make life easier when it comes to focusing your object.

What are you going to piggyback it on? Will you be tracking? Without any tracking your exposure times will be limited.

Cheers

Jeremy

[brantuk]

Apart from the slow usb, and low resolution it's a cheap way into AP with a dslr. The 350D would be a better bet having set a standard that lasted a long time - only recently taken over by the 1000D.

Have a read of this page wich gives you a full run down of the Canon range used in astronomy:

Astronomiser - Automated Astronomy and AstroImaging Solutions

[Digz]

In essence it should get you going.

Just remember you will need a remote release to access the bulb function and spare batteries. Canons are well supported for tethered shooting so thats good, meaning you can hook up to your lappy and away you go.

However, as mentioned above, if you are not tracking then your subs will be seriously limited depending on the focal length of lens used it could be anywhere from 5s to 30s.

HTH

[Maximillion]

i will be piggyback mounting on the tube mounting rings and it will be tracking by a dual axis motor.

[brantuk]

Max - have a look at "shoestringastronomy" website - there's a handset mod that turns your rig into a guiding setup:

The Shoestring Astronomy Store

Might be of some use to you

[ollypenrice]

You mention DSOs, galaxies etc. These are very small on the sky so are usually shot through the telescope. However, widefield views are also excellent using camera lenses. Short FLs are very tolerant of tracking errors, long focal lengths very intolerant.

You can model chip size/focal length on planetarium software to see what you will fit on your chip. I think a free one is called CCD calculator.

Olly

[Glider]

For software to capture with have a look at AstroPhotography Tool and/or BackyardEOS.