Canon EOS 550D

[adamw]

I have just bought a T ring and adaptor to fit a dslr straight into the 2” focuser tube on my equinox 120ed pro and also a copy of digital slr astrophotography by Michael Covington. I will be using my wife’s EOS 550D which I bought her last year. I have not read all of the book yet but with what I have read I feel the need to have a go at taking images of something as soon as the weather or work permit. Is this camera at all suitable for astrophotography?

[JamesF]

I'm sure it will be. You may want to look into AstroPhotography Tool (APT) or BackyardEOS (BYE) as a means of controlling the camera. No reason you can't use it with the lens rather than the telescope for taking wide field images, too.

James

[GlassWalker]

The camera will be fine for many tasks, although with that particular scope you might have to work at it a bit.

You can try deep sky although it wont be the easiest first step with that scope. On that note you could get great results using a camera lens. The DSLRs as standard wont be as sensitive as it could be to H-alpha emissions (the red glowy stuff) and it is popular to convert it to be better by removing an internal filter. Of course, this is not the best idea if the camera is used primarily for normal stuff!

Stick a big enough barlow on it and you can have a go at planets too, but again could be a challenge.

I nearly overlooked an easier target: the moon. With that scope as is, the moon will easily fit the frame. Again you can use a barlow if you want to try and get more detail.

If you don't already have one, I find a cable release to be invaluable when shooting manually. If you're more adventurous you can also control the camera remotely over USB, although it isn't something I've really tried seriously yet.

[Tinker1947]

If you don't have or want tuse a Laptop one of these will do a very good job, what you don't want to do is press the shutter button to take a image, this will just make it all shake, try using a ISO @ 800 , if your mount is a EQ and its Polar aligned then go for 1 minute exposure, if not run some tests see what you can get away with....

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Timer-Remote-Control-RS-60E3-Canon/dp/B003WD0IKO/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1352142336&sr=8-6

[Ags]

I will be using my wife’s EOS 550D which I bought her last year.

Good planning!

[adamw]

Thanks for the advise. I have already bought her a cable release and thinking of getting her a new laptop for Christmas !

I will probably start by trying the moon but I do fancy a bash at the pleiades. It looked amazing through my 32mm Panaview ep at kielder.