Newbie Astrophotographer

[IconAstro]

Hi everyone

My first post on here and I'd be really grateful for some advice / opinions on an appropriate setup please.

Basically, I'm new to Astronomy but am a fairly experiencened photographer and I'm looking to purchase my first telescope which has the potential for astrophography (and videos) too. My camera is a Canon 600d SLR and I would like to connect it to a setup that would allow me to photograph the moon, planets etc. Perhaps more ambitious things later.

I've done a bit of research and have collated my 'wish list' for the telescope I want. To tick all these boxes may be too optimistic (if so please tell me!) but here goes on the things I would like ideally:

- My budget is around £200 to £250 and might stretch to more

- I don't want something too big (as in heavy) or that takes too long to assemble / disassemble (or too complex for a newbie)

- I would like to be able to transport it fairly easily in the back of a car for taking on hols etc (in a case?)

- This might contradict my earlier point but I would like something built well and that will last

- Further to this, I dont want to buy something then wish 6 months later I had spent a few pounds more (this might happen anyway!)

- I would like to be able to connect my SLR camera to it fairly easily and cost effectively

- Likewise, it would be great to connect to my computer too

- If possible, I would like to use it for terrestrial use too (but mainly for astronomy)

- I would like something which is motor driven off the shelf ideally

Sorry if that is a long list but I'd be really grateful for some help on this.

For an example as to the sort of telescopes I have looked at so far:

- Celestron Astromaster 130EQ-MD Reflector

- Skywatcher Explorer 130P Newtonian Reflector

I look forward to getting some views and suggestions.

Thank you.

[JamesF]

It's somewhat over your budget by the time you've added a mount to be honest, but for imaging the Moon and the Sun, I think I'd suggest something like the Skymax 127. You can put your DSLR straight on the back of that and get full disc images. Planets are more tricky because ideally you'd want to use a high frame rate camera, but again the same telescope would be very good for starting out with planetary imaging.

Depending on what lenses you have for your camera, you might consider combining that scope with an EQ3-2 GOTO for long exposure wide field images, though you could get away with the standard EQ3-2 plus motors.

The telescopes you suggest can be used for imaging the planets and moon, but they're not ideal because of their wide field of view. Particularly for planetary imaging you want lots of focal length. When imaging the planets I'm usually adding barlows to my 127 to reach an effective focal length of close to 5000mm.

If you have imaging of galaxies and nebulae in the back of your mind however, I'd recommend you first read Steve Richards "Making Every Photon Count" to give you a clearer idea of what's what. Having read that you may well find that you want to approach things another way.

James

[IconAstro]

Thank you very much for the reply, much appreciated.

[JamesF]

Re-reading part of my post I realise I was a little vague about wide field imaging. To clarify, if you had the 127 Mak on the EQ3-2 GOTO, you could take it off and put the camera (plus a standard lens) on the mount by itself for wide field imaging. The movement of the mount should help prevent star trailing in longer exposures.

James

[Pig]

Hiya and welcome

[IconAstro]

Re-reading part of my post I realise I was a little vague about wide field imaging. To clarify, if you had the 127 Mak on the EQ3-2 GOTO, you could take it off and put the camera (plus a standard lens) on the mount by itself for wide field imaging. The movement of the mount should help prevent star trailing in longer exposures.

James

Cool, that's interesting and something I genuinely had not thought of.

Excellent advice, thank you.

[JamesF]

Here are a few examples done that way with various lenses. They're some of my first non-planetary images.

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/157267-another-cygnus-widefield/#entry1593855

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/162867-a-better-wide-field-andromeda-galaxy/

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/165604-cassiopeia-wide-field/

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/165637-perseus-wide-field/

James

[IconAstro]

Nice - do you have any examples of planet images?

I'd be interested to see them.

Thank you.

[JamesF]

Some of Jupiter, taken last November:

And some of Mars from March last year:

James

[usher4566]

Some of Jupiter, taken last November:

james these mars images are stunning

And some of Mars from March last year:

James

[IconAstro]

Awesome, thank you.

Would love to do something like that myself.

One day!

[JamesF]

Thank you

They're all taken with an SPC900 webcam and 127 Mak on a motorised (but non GOTO) EQ3-2 mount.

To complete the set of targets you were talking about, here's a sequence of Moon images I took at end of November/start of December last year. All these were done with my 450D on the back of the same 127 Mak telescope:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/169305-full-moon-28-november-2012/

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/169422-not-quite-so-full-moon-29th-november/

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/169528-moon-30th-november-2012/

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/169604-moon-1st-december-2012/

Hopefully that should give you a fairly good idea of what can be achieved with it, but there are other people posting images using the same kit in the relevant sections of the site if you have a browse through.

James