dob for imaging

[EE TEA]

excuse the lack of knowledge but is it possible to take pictures with a dob using a dsl and can i buy some kind of gears to move the dob?. i am buying a 10" on saturday and just wondered for the future if any of this is possible.

[themos]

Of course it is, the question is do you want to spend the kind of money that would make it so. As you can verify, it's not the done thing and there's a reason for it. The Dobsonian is optimised for observing. You'd probably be better off getting a second scope (light, small refractor on an equatorial mount) for long exposure photography. Unless you are kind of person who enjoys designing and building stuff from scratch.

[Milamber]

Well, I have a rather large dob and recently spent about £1500 adding a StellarCAT drive/goto system... even then were I to drop a camera in it I would be restricted to short-ish (depending an altitude) exposures because of the Alt/Az mounting. I would strongly suggest if you want to image you are going to be better off going the equatorial route.

arthur

[GordonCopestake]

Just to expand on Arthurs answer, because it's Alt/Az mounted the image rotates when taking long exposure images (over a few minutes say) this means your image is blured. An equitorial mount doesn't rotate the image so you can have unlimited exposures (given a perfect mount)

[EE TEA]

cheers for the replies.

i shall stick to observing for now, just learn and get to know whats up there.

[iancandler]

You could always have a go at making an equatorial platform for your dob.

They can also be purchased ready made from the USA.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/molyned/the_equatorial_platform.htm

http://www.equatorialplatforms.com/

There are usually some to be found going on the cloudy nights forum as well.

[EE TEA]

thanks ian but a bit beyond me i'll stick to looking for now.