Beginner question, new Celestron Edge HD 8 owner

[Doberman]

Hello all,

I am new to astronomy. I have just ordered in Celestron edge HD 8 that will be arriving next week. I would like to get into astrophotography using Nikon Dslr's (have both full frame and DX bodies). Hope that was a good choice...

My question is what else do I need to purchase? Must haves? Nice to haves?

I ordered a T adaptor and the Nikon connector. Do I need another piece to connect my new C edge hd? Is an auto aligner must? What Sw do I need?

Been doing a lot of research on the net and called couple places but still unclear. Any advice and help greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Murat

[knobby]

What do you want to image? Planets, deep space, and what mount is the celestron on?

[nmoushon]

The biggest question, if you want to get into AP, is what mount do you have? You will first want an Equitorial mount and second one that can hold that size of telescope. For AP I would wager the Orion Sirius is the bare minimum and the prefered minimum would be the Orion Atlas.

The next important thing would be some type of guiding. With out guiding, unless you have a very expensive mount, you will be very limited to the length of your exposures. Like 10-20sec before you start getting star trails. This will require either an OAG, a second guide scope (ST80), or a DIY 9x50 finder scope all with some type of camera.

Then I would purchase the .7x reducer for it. Imaging a F/10, especially with a dslr, takes an extreme amount of time to get even decent images. F/7 is a much more doable option. I believe there is also a .5x reducer but not sure if it works with the Edge or not.

[knobby]

... Making every photon count...

[nmoushon]

... Making every photon count...

+1

But it can be difficult/expensive to get here in the USA.

[knobby]

http://www.nightskyimages.co.uk/making_every_photon_count.htm

Lots of postal costs though :-(

[Doberman]

What do you want to image? Planets, deep space, and what mount is the celes

I got the Celestron VX mount. Here is a link to it:

http://www.telescopes.com/telescopes/catadioptric-telescopes/celestronadvancedvx8inchedgehdtelescope.cfm

I want to start with simpler objects. Assuming they are easier to photograph, Moon, and planets. Than definitely deep space.

Thanks for all the replies....

[nmoushon]

I got the Celestron VX mount. Here is a link to it:

http://www.telescopes.com/telescopes/catadioptric-telescopes/celestronadvancedvx8inchedgehdtelescope.cfm

I want to start with simpler objects. Assuming they are easier to photograph, Moon, and planets. Than definitely deep space.

Thanks for all the replies....

That scope should work just fine for the moon and planets. For those you will want a web cam type camera to take video. Then you get a program that will stack the best individual frames of a 1min video or so. You can go the sheao route and mod a web came (see the DIY section or Equipment Camera section) or there are dedicated planteray/lunar camera that can range from a couple hundred to thousands of dollars.

If you want to get get into the deep space imaging then you will more than likely want to upgrade the mount. I'm not fimilar with this mount though. It looks like a CG-5 clone but someone else will have to pop in on that one. If you have to to upgrade or not upgrade the next thing you'll need is a guide scope/camera and a focal reducer. You will also want either a DSLR or a CCD camera for long exposures. The web cam wont be very good for the long exposures.

[Zadoq]

Doberman, I think you've come to the right place with your questions.

We are in a similar situation to you: ordered a C8 HD with the same mount a couple of months ago and had lots of questions about how to connect the kit, what is needed etc

Folks here have been so helpful.

As mentioned above, you need to ask yourself what you want to do with your scope. We naively thought that our C8 HD would be good or least decent for everything but that's just not the case. We are now looking for our second scope, much earlier than we thought because we are mostly interested in deep sky imaging (we're going for a short and fast refractor)

Good luck in your celestial adventures.

Carly & Nico