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One more new member - astrohpotography

cokecan72

By cokecan72
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cokecan72

cokecan72

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Hi All

I'm very interested in giving astrophotography a go to make a change from my usual day-to-day photography and star trails I've been doing over the last few years.

I recently aquired a used Skywatcher EQ2 mount which I thought may do the job, but after a bit of light reading I'm starting to wonder. Was planning on adding a single axis drive motor and getting an adapter to attach my DSLR to it but lack of a scope/finder on the EQ2 does concern me.....I know that I can probably try to polar align using the viewfinder of my camera and drift calculations but I'm still skeptical as to whether this will be enough. My other options is to jerry rig a polar scope onto the EQ2 somehow. With that in mind when I think about all the money I'd potentially be spending on bits to bring the EQ2 up to scratch for use with astrophotography I do wonder whether I'd be better to just sell it and buy something a bit better (I guess at the very least the EQ3-2 with polar scope).

Had thought about an Astrotrac but I think I would like the option to eventually add a telescope. Besides the Astrotrac is a bit out of my budget :) Would an AZ GOTO be useful here? Can they track the sky in the way I want for wide field astrophotography?

Does anyone have any other thoughts or advice? It's worth noting that I am on a bit of a budget (probably no more than £300). It's hard to justify any more money to something I'm not even sure how much I'd use thoughout the year. I have no issue buying second hand to keep the cost down.

Thanks

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moogoomonkey

moogoomonkey

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Hey and welcome to the forum. I'm not sure, but I don't think an AZ GOTO would be suitable for AP as the mount still moves in 2 directions so you will get jerkiness from the mount in long exposures. But what do I know! I've never ventured that far before! welcome to SGL!

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Marc1980

Marc1980

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Welcome to SGL. Successful astrophotography is all about the mount. Some have accomplished good results with an eq5 mount but ideally a heq5 or neq6 is required. Both of these are equatorial mounts the type of mount needed for astrophotography. If you havent already got it get a copy of Every photon counts by Steve Richards. That will point you in the right direction to equip yourself for astrophotography.

Regards

Marc

Sent from my galaxy s3 using tapatalk 2

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Welrod50

Welrod50

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Welcome aboard cokecan :)

another +1 for the book Making Every Photon Count. It is very useful!!

Secondly, I use an EQ3 Pro SynScan mount which works a treat for me. If you chose this route, then you would be limited to smaller/lighter scope tubes unless you plumped for an EQ6 Synscan, as these are larger, heavier and capable of much higher weight loads. I haven't done it yet, but I intend to get a spare dovetail bar and stick this onto my mount and piggyback my DSLR on it for widefield. Of course, you could always do this by piggybacking on the optical tube, but for really wide field stuff, the tube would intrude into the field of view.

GO TO Az mounts will do astrophotography, but as they work in steps, exposure times will be limited. To be fair, I tend to stick with 30 second subs with my synscan (equatorial tracking as opposed to alt az) as I do not auto guide my rig. But I could get more depending on what I was taking and where in the sky it may be (although not done so just yet due to the cloud cover for the last umpteen weeks) :(

HTH :)

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JamesF

JamesF

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Welcome to SGL.

If you just intend to use a DSLR and (relatively) short focal length lenses then you might get away with an EQ2. One SGL member (themos) has built a portable imaging rig using an EQ1 and achieves reasonable polar alignment using a plate-solving system whilst another (steppenwolf, the author of the above recommended book -- a recommendation I'd second) fitted a red dot finder to an EQ1 to act as a polar scope for polar alignment.

In the general case however, if you want to use a telescope for imaging DSOs then a HEQ5 is probably where you should be looking at starting. It is possible to use smaller/cheaper mounts than that and some people have done so quite successfully. but you'll either have to greatly restrict your choice of kit or end up making a lot of other work for yourself (or both :). And if you're even contemplating spending the cost of a HEQ5 you really, really should read Steve's book first.

I've used my EQ3-2 for wide field imaging with the kit Canon 18-55mm lens and for imaging of large DSOs such as M31 with the 200mm f/2.8 L lens, but it's probably really pushing things to use it for a guided imaging platform with a telescope. You'd have to be exceptionally careful about how you did it to avoid problems due do overloading the mount.

In general alt-az platforms aren't suitable for astro imaging because they don't track the motion of the stars across the sky in the right way (the axis of rotation of the imaging system doesn't match up with the axis of rotation of the Earth) and if you're taking decent length exposures you'll see field rotation effects in the images.

James

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JamesM

JamesM

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Hi and welcome to the forum. Also add my recommendation for Steve's book and is essential reading before buying any kit. There are many different ways of obtaining good images but any glance at the kit signatures of those posting in the imaging sections which tell you what kit that most people find works the best and produces the most consistent results.

Clear skies

James

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cokecan72

cokecan72

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wow! 15 replies in one day?! this forum is way more friendly and active than I was expecting :)

Many thanks for all the help and advice so far. As per the numerous posts recommending "Making Every Photon Count", I've ordered a copy.

Initially I was looking at using my 28mm and 50mm prime lenses for this. This should give me a bit more leeway in exposure times. I hear what everyone is saying though, that spending more on a decent mount in the first place will probably be better for me in the long run. I'll have a read of this book and see where that takes me, at the very least I can save a bit more in that time and think about selling the EQ2 to fund a better mount.

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glowjet

glowjet

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Hi Cokecan72 and welcome to SGL and the New year, I read from your first thread that an Astro-track could be of interest in your wide field camera work but for the cost involved, if you have DIY skills there is another alternative and I would suggest you look up Dave trott`s Barn Door project, with a bit of care and good materials you could produce a mount capable of holding a camera/telephoto lens combo and get sidereal tracking for quite long periods and no doubt still get some change out of £50 :)

john.

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