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Garfield

By Garfield
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Garfield

Garfield

Posted
Posted

Hi,

My name is Dave and i'm new to this, i have had my telescope since this time last year but only done a few observation sessions over the winter from my back garden.

I have a Celestron 130eq but i am now looking at something larger and also looking into astrophotography so any advice on what i should get would be really helpful (I will do a some research on here and the web)

Best things i have seen so far are Jupiter and its moons, and the Ring nebula, i thought this was pretty impressive from a big city.

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JamesF

JamesF

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Welcome to SGL.

If you're thinking about astro-imaging I'm sure I won't be the only one to tell you that the place to start is with the book "Making Every Photon Count", available from FLO (see the link at the top of the page) amongst others. I'd add that you really need to think about how much you're willing to spend and what's really viable from your location. "Birmingham" covers a lot of sins and whilst some of it is probably not too bad I imagine there are also areas of hideously bad light pollution. If you have to travel to get to a decent imaging site then you may need to factor the necessary portability and requirements for power into your decisions.

James

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Marki

Marki

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HI and welcome to the Lounge Dave! It really is amazing what you can see from the city! Next time try hunting the globular M13 - should get that quite easily, and its fab! And for ultimate wow - have you managed to find Saturn yet?

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JamesM

JamesM

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HI Dave and welcome to the forum. I would reinforce James's recommendation of Steve Richards' "Making Every Photon Count". Being modestly priced at £19.95, it will probably save you some money in helping you avoid buying the wrong kit and in addition will provide you with the necessary overview to help you determine a proper budget. Imaging starts with a mount and if you are likely to be mobile with your "rig" (whole setup) then a mount that can facilitate autoguiding (Skywatcher HEQ5) will be the minimum you need. Autoguiding allows you to track a nearby star to the main object that you wish to image and it does so by sending micro second adjustments to the mounts motors thereby also ensuring that the main imaging scope on the same mount is held accurately on its own target. Some people image from their observatory (e.g a roll on/off shed) which allows tracking accuracy to be achieved in other ways as this setup allows for more permanent alignment. When budgeting for imaging kit, it is natural for the consideration to focus on the data collecting side (scope & camera etc) but of course data collection is only half the story, data processing being the other. Thankfully there is a lot of free software out there to help you extract and use as much of your collected data as possible but equally there are one or two really useful software packages which sadly are not free and so will need to be included in your original budget. If you want some idea what sort of kit imagers are using, it might be worth a wander around the imaging sections on this forum to check out members' kit in their signatures which will help you build up a picture of what most people are using. Many people have tried to go against what the majority use and although it is still possible to achieve fairly good results, consistent performing kit will produce consistent results which will ultimately enable you to experience imaging as being more about fun than frustration and certainly something you will want to repeat. Hope that helps.

Clear skies

James

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