Can I use a Celestron Nexstar 127slt for astrophotography?

[SpacedJay]

I brought a 127 slt 2 years ago as a starter scope, could this be useful for astrophotography as well?

[tekkydave]

No reason why not. Probably best for lunar or planetary. Here is my best Jupiter (so far) using an ASI ZWO120MC camera on my 127slt.

[SpacedJay]

Great image! What type of mount do you use?

[tekkydave]

At the moment just the alt-az mount the scope comes with. Planetary is simple as you just take a video and stack it. There are tons of tutorials on SGL and elsewhere on how to do it.

[tekkydave]

Link to my original post:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/209881-first-ever-jupiter/

[SpacedJay]

I was thinking about getting a eq mount for it, but not sure which one would be suitable or strong enough if I wanted to add a camera etc.

[ronin]

If I recall from yesterday the mount is an Alt/Az, so as Dave says best for Moon and planetary with a webcam. I assume that he ASI120 was operating as a webcam??

Not sure if the mount can be tilted and so set up as an equitorial and then if it can be defined as a equitorial. If it can then you will need something to set the latitude angle. Then do not expect exposures of that great a length.

You will need to consult the manual to find out what configurations it can be set to.

[tekkydave]

I'm planning to get a Celestron AVX in the future mainly because the starsense and skysync accessories I use on the 127slt will also work on the AVX.

[SpacedJay]

Thanks for the info, Dave will the AVX allow you to do deep sky photography with the scope?

[JamesF]

Something like the EQ3-2 is sufficient if you just want an EQ mount for the 127 Mak, but it gets really hard work once you start to go for DSOs because it's just not accurate enough.  Anything but bright DSOs are a very serious struggle because of the exposure time required, but even globs are a challenge.  I found that I was throwing away at least half my exposures on bright globs with that sort of kit.  Things did get somewhat better when I moved to a HEQ5, but even so the brightest of the galaxies was next to impossible because you need so much exposure time at that image scale.

There is at least one 127 Mak DSO imaging thread that might be worth a read through.  These are representative of the best I was able to achieve with the scope with 45 second exposures, which was pretty much the best I could achieve unguided:

Once I started guiding I could get up to about two minutes per exposure, giving me something like this:

Galaxies were still completely out of the question though

The little Mak's forte really is solar system work to be honest.

James

[JamesF]

(In case it's not clear, all the above images were captured using EQ mounts, not an alt-az.)

James

[tekkydave]

The AVX is an equitorial mount so in theory it can be used to get the longer exposure times needed for deep sky photography. However, the 127 scope is not ideal as it has a long focal length (1500mm) and very narrow field of view.

Some people have used the 127 to do DSO A/P on an a-z mount (search for posts by Paulus17) but a mount and scope more suited would be better. I'm not an expert but SGL is full of advice on the best scopes for DSO and also mounts. The Skywatcher EQ5 and 6 mounts (various models) seems to be favourites.

[SpacedJay]

That's great to know, the scope is my son's and he is looking to take some DSO images in the future as I have just started to as well recently. Hopefully a bit of upgrading will allow him to do so.

[ollypenrice]

The long focal length makes guiding harder and the slow F ratio means you need longer expoures. This makes a double whammy working against you for DS imaging because longer exposures also make guiding harder...

But James has overcome these challenges on brighter DSOs.

Olly

[BATUHAN DERELI]

Hİ , I had still problems with deep sky objects ,  ı  took  different  photos  ı tried  to make  stack them  .  when  you  look at the  photos  ,  ı short tracked 6sn X 5  photos  ... ı have  to  find the  way  take  orion  or others ...  is  there anybody  knows  how to  that with  celestron 127mm slt  telescope .... and  ı ve  canon 5d 2.....