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Cath

By Cath
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Cath

Cath

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Hello StarGazers from a sunny, rainy, warmy, coldy, frosty, windy, not so windy, cloudy, light polluted Shropshire.

Getting older these days but have always been interested in what's out there, so joined the group and have ordered a Cannon EOS 500D to start doing some camera-only astrophotography.

Will buy a SkyWatcher 200p when/if I can afford one in the near future. Would love a much bigger one (size DOES matter, well in this case it does :) ) but as always it comes down to ones budget.

So there you go.

Cathy

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Cath

Cath

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Hi Cathy, welcome to SGL, you want to think about buying one of these for imagines it means you don't need a laptop outside....

TIMER REMOTE CONTROL FOR CANON 550D 500D 450D 1000D | eBay

Thank you Tinker!

Yes I was going to get something like that (once I've recovered from the expense of buying the EOS 500D).

I was also going to try a couple of 5 meter repeater USB cables, they seem to work OK on the HD webcam, so I'll try them on the 500D when it arrives. That way I can sit in comfort in the house on the main PC.

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Flyingpig

Flyingpig

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Hi Cath and welcome to the Stargazers lounge

Here's my comprehensive intro for beginners.

As goes buying equipment take your time, be patient you don't need any equipment to start out in this hobby, your own eyes are the main tool. Many wise people start out with binoculars to get a feel for the hobby, and to learn their way around the sky before buying an expensive telescope. Meet up with other observers if you can and try out a variety of different types of equipment, there might be an SGL observers group close to you, or else locate your nearest Astro society.

Welcome to the hobby and enjoy yourself it may seem that there's a lot to learn in the beginning but take your time and be patient don't rush out and buy a scope which turns out to be a lemon or something that you find to difficult to use. Get an idea of what to expect from the equipment; no telescope is going to show you the planets and deep space objects like nebulae etc in the glorious detail you see in magazines and film, these are obtained by spacecraft or by astrophotography using expensive and dedicated ccd cameras.

You can however get reasonable results using a cheapish webcam through a telescope. What you can expect to see through a telescope with your own eyes are the planets; these appears as small circles of light, you may see banding on Jupiter and with larger scopes you will see the great red spot and some detail on Saturn and Mars, you will see Jupiters moons and Saturns rings, you will see Galaxies and Nebulae but these appear as fuzzy patches. The stars will not appear any bigger since they are too far (often many light years) away, but you will see a lot more stars that weren't visible with your naked eye. Remember too that in addition to a telescope you need to buy decent eyepieces many people buy expensive scopes and then budget on the eyepieces - these are just as essential as the scope itself.

I don't want go put you off astronomy - rather I wish to prepare you to enjoy the hobby to its best; having the best equipment that is suited to your needs and ability is going to serve you much better since you will use it more often and you will enjoy the hobby better. Remember also that this hobby is conducted at night time often in sub zero temperatures, clear skies mean cold nights whatever time of year, but more so in the winter months, wrap up well with thermal clothing, a warm coat and fingerless gloves hat and scarf etc put on twice as many layers than you think you might need - its surprising how soon you will feel cold when your not moving about much.

Finally good luck in your quest and have fun, if you need any help or advice just ask any of us we are more than willing to be if help.

Phil

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todd8137

todd8137

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hi and welcome,charity shops some times have great binoculars in for pennies,they a great way to start ,most people have a old pair lay in about or one of the family usually have ,i got some great carl zeiss 20x60 for 6 quid a bargain

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JamesM

JamesM

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Hi Cathy and welcome to the forum.

Building on Phil's introduction to astronomy and getting to know the sky, may I recommend this free bit of planetarium software calles Stellarium and you can view it from here. Lots of 'toys' on it to keep you busy when those clouds roll in (...and Stay!!!!). It will help you find stuff and to also identify what you are looking at. A useful feature is the advanced time/date which will help you plan your observing session to get the most out of the few clear nights that are currently available.

Nothing in astronomy is difficult to learn, its just that there rather a lot of it. There is also a search button at the top of the page to help you research past questions and answers. No such thing as a daft question but the answers you get might well be - I know as I've written half of them! No matter what mistakes you make or ideas you have, there are many here that have done it and so you have made a good choice in coming here to wanting to learn.

Clear skies

James

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Cath

Cath

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wow, so many welcomes, thank you everyone :)

Yes James, I first started to use Stellarium a couple of years ago after my sister-in-law bought a cheap 6" reflector scope off someone. Seeing a close up of the moon through it I found quite facinating, actually seeing all the features with my own eye in realtime I found quite different to all the pics I've seen, it sort of made pictures look a bit flat after that. I was quite surprised at just how fast the moon passes by in the scopes view.

Also saw Mars through it, though it was quite small but still somewhat bigger than the pin points of stars, could just about make out some features of Mars but that was about it - again keeping it view meant constant knob twidding.

Also noticed how different the colour of some stars are (red and blue ones) through it.

Thank you Phil for your comprehensive intro :) .. Yes I realise that any equipment that I could ever afford is never going to show anything like the detail etc the pro's (and alike) get to see and record, so don't worry.

What I am partly interested in trying is seeing what I could maybe do with super-resolution algorithums together with optical flow routines and frame averaging/stacking to create higher resolution images than the camera itself creates, the optical flow routines will be to try and cancel out some of the atmospheric distortions. Super-resolution algorithums can extract sub-pixel detail ... I write software.

My first task is to start with the EOS 500D camera to get some usable wide field images of the night sky, which I'm hoping the camera will be able to do. I'll no doubt have to use a motorised mount with it when doing long exposures.

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Cath

Cath

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The last software project I was involved in was for quadcopter control, this is one of the videos I took of our progress ..

OpenPilot QuadCopter Variant - YouTube

The project before that was to control a very large solar panel array - to track the sun using sensors.

The one before that was the QS1R project. Here's some videos of the software I wrote ..

FM145TEST.mp4 - YouTube

Maxus_.mov - YouTube

So I'm hoping I can do something that might be of some use for astronomy, and enjoy learning about it all at the same time.

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