Upgrade list

[chiralchemist]

Hi all. My daughter and I have been interested in astronomy for the best part of 18 months now. We have a Celestron Nexstar 127 SLT and have been really impressed with views of Jupiter, Venus, the Moon and some constellations. We've started to take some photo's of the skies, and had some reasonable success with our little Canon Powershot A710. We're planning on getting a new general purpose camera - the Canoon Eos 1100D is looking like the best contender to use for this and a general purpose camera. My question is what would you consider an important 'upgrade list' to be able to see more and take more photographs of the night sky. Mine is below (ranked in order of cost!), but I'd welcome any advice.

Thanks

1. T-ring for camera

2. T Adapter for camera

3. Piggy back mount

4. Light-pollution filter(s)

5. Improved eyepieces (maybe even to 2 inch?)

6. Improved mount ??

7. Improved scope ??

[DOBBY]

before buying any gear... try & get the book... Making Every Photon Count by Steve Richards

It'll save you a lot of headaches & cash spent on wrong extras.

but to answer your Q.6... yes... it's where to start

or read this thread & get a webcam http://stargazerslounge.com/primers-tutorials/40665-primer-planetary-imaging-toucam.html

[Catweazel]

+ 1 on what Dobby said.

And you will need a T-ring

[chiralchemist]

Thanks to your both for the quick response! I'll try and get hold of the book you mentioned. Pretty typical the most important item is one of the most expensive!

[John]

I'm not an imager but from the little I do know, I think you will need a complete new setup for deep sky imaging, if your interests lie in that direction.

For visual, 2" eyepieces don't offer benefits for the 127mm maksutov-cassegrains due to the small diameter of the aperture in the rear of the scope. The supplied 1.25" eyepieces can be improved on fairly easily though.

[chiralchemist]

So if a mount is the key upgrade to think about, does anyone have a good recommendation? Do I need to stick with Celestron or are there generic ones out there too? Sorry if this is a rather naive question.

[Charon]

The answer depends on if you intend getting a bigger telescope later on, plus all the attachments that will be added so you need to think far in advance to save you buying twice so to speak.

[chiralchemist]

Given that I'd need to spend to upgrade the mount, I think it unlikely that I'd be upgrading the scope soon afterwards. What do you think to the Celestron CG-5 GT GOTO?

[JamesF]

Assuming I've got the right one (I believe it's the same as my 127 Mak), the Nexstar 127 isn't ideally suited to DSO imaging, but can do a pretty good job for basic imaging of planets given the chance. I've posted some of my images with this scope in the planetary imaging forum (as have others) if you want to get an idea of what's possible. Given a suitably modified webcam (a lifecam, say) and a laptop you may find that what you have is sufficient to get you started. Mars is still high in the sky and Saturn is on its tail, so there's plenty to play with there.

The 1100D is fine for starting DSO imaging, but in all likelihood you'd really be looking for a different scope and a different mount and spending quite a lot of cash. You might well get far more enjoyment out of spending far less than that on a webcam and some better eyepieces now and then trying to upgrade mount and telescope over time.

James

[chiralchemist]

James, thats really useful thanks. Now for some obvious follow-on questions I'm afraid. Are there any recommended webcams, and do these attach directly to the end of the eyepieces; if so are adapaters needed.

Secondly, I know that the latest DSLRS have a video mode. Could you setup an eyepiece projection with the DSLR instead of a webcam? Again I guess you would need a suitable adapter to fix the camera to the end of the eyepiece?

Finally what's your view on using the nexstar to track an object and piggybacking a camera on it?

[JamesF]

The webcam to have used to be the SPC880/SPC900, but they're rarer than hen's teeth these days. An alternative is a modified Xbox Live camera (about £5 on ebay) or a modified Microsoft Lifecam which I think run to about £40 new, but are higher resolution. There are lots of threads about modifying them on SGL and elsewhere that are worth a read before committing yourself. Usually part of the modification is making or fitting some sort of nosepiece that allows the camera to fit into the standard 1.25" telescope fitting.

I have no experience of the video-mode DSLRs, but I think they'd probably always be easier used with a T fitting rather than using eyepiece projection. In single-shot mode that might be a good way to try some lunar imaging with the DSLR. Remote shutter control would be a good plan in either case. For imaging Mars I'm taking about 6000 frames over ten minutes at the moment using a webcam. I've no idea how a DSLR in video mode would handle that.

I think using the nexstar to piggyback a camera probably wouldn't work as you need long exposures and whilst the mount might track, it doesn't do it in the same way that the earth rotates, so you'd always end up with star trails. That's my best guess, anyhow.

James

[182570]

I think you need to decide on the path you want to take before making any purchases,as most on here say serious AP requires a serious mount minimum eq5 or equivalent,so really you need to plan what you want to do and plan carefully or you could spend a lot of money on equipment that may not be of much use to you.