Suggested accessories for DSLR night sky photography

[jonathan]

I am now the lucky owner of a lovely new 50mm f1.4 lens for my Canon 1000D, and I'd like to give it a spin on the night sky for some wide-field shots.

Could anyone suggest if I might need things such as a lens hood or filters? Can I get away with a daylight filter fitted to the lens? (I try to keep one on at all times mainly to protect the lens from dust and grit)

I plan to attach the camera to my ST80 which has a direct camera fitting screw post on the tube rings, I may also get a camera mount to piggyback on my 8SE.

Any help or suggestions appreciated!

[swag72]

What kind of exposure length are you looking at being able to achieve? Does your mount track?

Accessory wise you really do need some kind of programmeable remote so that you can tell the camera to take x numbers of photos, for x number of seconds and with a delay inbetween each shot to allow for the sensor to cool between each shot.

For my 1000D I used to allow 60 seconds between each shot for the sensor to cool down.

Filter wise, it's really a light pollution filter you will need if your exposures are going to be long enough.

[jonathan]

I have a hand-held electronic remote that can do that kind of programmed shooting, the ST80 doesn't have tracking on the EQ1 but the 8SE will be on an NEQ6 SynTrek.

I was hoping to just be able to do a few on my normal camera tripod to be honest.

[swag72]

If you already have a remote that can do programmed shooting then you can just put the camera on a tripod and shoot away. Depending on the focal length of the lens you use will determine you exposure length. It will only be a matter of seconds before you start to notice star trails, so you will need to experiment. Then takes LOADS and I mean loads (over 100 if possible) and then throw them into stacking software (Such as Deep Sky Stacker - Free) and then I am sure you will have something to process. Then the fun begins! The easy part is getting the pictures!!

[Demonperformer]

I have a celestron piggyback mount, which I have used with both a canon and a SX ccd camera. Even on the SE mount it easily gave me 2 min exposures, and mounted on NEQ6 the sky will be the limit (pun definitely intended).

[x6gas]

If by "daylight filter" you mean an IR cut filter then you may be better off removing that, depending on what you are trying to image. Also, if you are in light polluted skies then an LP filter would be a good investment; tuned to eliminate the sodium orange glare.

[jonathan]

If by "daylight filter" you mean an IR cut filter then you may be better off removing that, depending on what you are trying to image. Also, if you are in light polluted skies then an LP filter would be a good investment; tuned to eliminate the sodium orange glare.

Actually it's more likely to be an Hoya UV filter or Hoya 81B, these both give decent UV filtering, the 81B also offering a slight warming effect (it filters some of the blue, similar to or the same as a UV filter), but I'm just not sure how this might effect my camera's potential to capture wide-field night skies. Is there much of interest in the Ultra-Violet range?

The Canon 1000D will have a built-in IR filter on the sensor as most DSLRs do, so I would not use an additional IR filter on the lens.