Hello From Weston - What Scope to Buy!!!

[ChrisWSM]

Hi there

Having spent most of my life, getting out of my car at night, and looking up at the stars in wonder, I'm about to take my first steps into Astro Photography. I have read so much about the mounts and OTAs, and am now reaching out for any advice from the community, to help me make my final decision. I've set a budget of £3k and have high hopes to get some decent equipment for that price. I have been drawn to Celestron and looked closely at their range, but welcome your guidance.

Kind regards

Chris

[John]

Hi Chris and welcome to the forum

I'm at Portishead so not far from you but I'm a visual astronomer rather than an imager so I'll leave it to others to provide detailed advice.

One thing that I have learned over the years about the imaging side of the hobby is that the book "Making Every Photon Count" by Steve Richards (a member here) is considered a very useful 1st step up the learning curve and will help to ensure that your £'s go towards equipment that will help you to get up and running in what seems to be a very complex world !

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/books/making-every-photon-count-steve-richards.html

Hope you have fun !

PS: Apologies if you already have the above title - I thought I should mention it though as it gets such good feedback.

Edited March 14, 2016 by John

[swag72]

Hi Chris and welcome to SGL - Good to have you on board. As an imager myself, THE biggest piece of advice is to buy the book 'Making Every Photon Count' available in the book section of the FLO website. Read it once, and twice and thrice..... then think abut what you need and why ....... if you aren't sure then read it again.... I'm not being flippant, that really is an imagers bible and should be compulsory reading for anyone wanting to take up DSO imaging before spending a single penny.

The main thing is the mount ..... mount .... mount ..... Have I said that the mount is important? It is THE major part of your imaging rig and so get a good EQ mount. That and a small refractor is the easiest way to get going. Have a look at the Field of View calculator here  to give you an idea of how different scope and camera's can affect the field of view you get.

Also go and have a look around the imaging section. Be realistic about what you want to achieve and look at the kit used to get the image - That will give you a good idea of the sorts of things people use.

Hope that helps

[Dave Lloyd]

Hi and welcome. There's plenty of advice on here but a typical setup might be assembled with "ED80/100, EQ6 and CCD cam.

[kendg]

As Sara stated so well. The mount is by far in the way the most important part.

Then remember, no matter what you buy, you will always want more and no matter what the budget is, it isn't enough 

[Pete Presland]

Hi welcome to SGL from Pete in Bedfordshire :-)

[laudropb]

Hello and a warm welcome to the SGL.

[Dave In Vermont]

Greetings, Chris, and welcome to SGL - it's nice to have you aboard! Do take a stroll through the many forums available to you here. I am certainly sure we can help you find answers to your needs on your quest to the world of astro-photography. The book suggested should fill in many blanks you may have on this field.

Clear & dark skies -

Dave

[PeterCPC]

Hello and welcome.

Peter

[Stephen Green]

Hi welcome to the SGL

 

  Stephen

[todd8137]

Hi and welcome from me 

pat 

[ChrisWSM]

Thanks everyone...

The book is on order, and will keep me occupied whilst sunning myself in Mexico

I guess I need to head off to another area to ask more questions and read as much as possible!

Thanks once again...

Regards
Chris

[glowjet]

Hi Chris and welcome to SGL, one of the best sources of information, you have already placed for, when it comes to the mysteries of imaging ( the dark side as we affectionately call it ) enjoy your Astronomy and the forum

[JamesM]

Hi Chris and welcome to the forum. Part of my early childhood was spent living in Weston-Super-Mare but I never managed to see the sea, though their was a strong rumour that it existed - hope you've had better luck Chris! Are Trapnell's donkeys still going strong?

Clear skies and hope you enjoy your stay here

[ChrisWSM]

15 hours ago, JamesM said:

Hi Chris and welcome to the forum. Part of my early childhood was spent living in Weston-Super-Mare but I never managed to see the sea, though their was a strong rumour that it existed - hope you've had better luck Chris! Are Trapnell's donkeys still going strong?

Clear skies and hope you enjoy your stay here

Hi James

The tide is in twice a day, so you should have seen it... Maybe the lens cap was still on your scope
Trapnells is still here, but Magers is the big player as far as donkeys go... I actually Host their website as I run a web hosting company.

The weather's been great, these past few nights, but I've yet to commit on a scope...!!! My budget has hit £4k now, so after I've read Steve Richards's book, I'll be bashing down the doors of a few retailers, I hope, because right now, I'm set on an EQ mount (but which one!!!) and being drawn to the Celestron EdgeHD OTAs. After that...Cameras, eye pieces, FastStar, exposure times, stacking software etc etc...are all a mystery to me!

Cheers...Chris

[JamesM]

   Thanks for the update!

[russp]

You might want to try a shorter focal length (refractor) before the ultra long length of and Edge HD - that sort of scope is supposed to be the domain of experienced imagers - I had a similar budget and ended up with a 127mm APO triplet refractor on an AZEQ6-GT, high quality kit but more importantly simple to use to learn on and it does produce great images. It's a steep enough learning curve with straightforward kit - you don't want to make it more difficult that it needs to be when you're learning. 

[jorman]

Hi,

I started in Astrophotography about eight years ago. I did not know anything about the hobby. I believe I have come a long way since and I had some images published.

I think that before you do anything you should read Ron Wodaski's The New CCD Astronomy book. It is over 400 pages and it comes in paper bag. It is worth its weight in gold. After you finished the book you will definitely know what you are talking about ! I consider it the CCD Bible. Even now I still go back to it when I have some doubts and/or questions. It covers all the topics you will eer need and then some....

Good luck,

Jorman

[Charon]

Hi Chris and welcome aboard.

[Linda]

Welcome. If you are often travelling by car, driving through darker areas than where your house is, you might want to keep portability in mind. Dark skies really make a great difference and it is nice to be able to set up a scope easily from having it in the back of your car.

The other alternative is to buy a scope for home use and invest in a pair of binoculars to have available in your car, for visual use.

[Twisted Lip]

On 3/14/2016 at 21:30, swag72 said:

The main thing is the mount ..... mount .... mount ..... Have I said that the mount is important? It is THE major part of your imaging rig and so get a good EQ mount. That and a small refractor is the easiest way to get going. Have a look at the Field of View calculator here  to give you an idea of how different scope and camera's can affect the field of view you get.

Hi Chris and from a fellow Westoner, welcome!

As Sara says, mount is always absolutely key. For images of any length of time, a decent mount will be needed to (basically) keep your images steady and give you enough data. I use an Skywatcher NEQ6 which I like very much but definitely have a poke around the imaging forums and do a bit of research to find something that suits you. As far as a scope goes, it will entirely depend on what you want to image (at a basic level, deep sky vs planetary). Whilst you can get good scopes that will (sort of) handle both, a lot of the purists will have different scopes for different targets. Having said that, I'll let others recommend scopes! 

Finally, and something to consider...
I only moved back to Weston last year from Henley on Thames. Whereas in Henley I had lovely dark skies and could image quite happily with RGB (with a CCD camera) and even a DSLR (admittedly with a light pollution filter), the North Somerset skies and much less forgiving. I haven't managed to get out much in the last 6 months (mainly due to the usual house moving stuff) but from the testing I've done, imaging in narrow band (with CCD) appears to be the best option from the Weston skies (so far anyway!) A caveat here however, I'm north of Weston itself so the standard southern Deep Sky targets sit right in the light pollution of Weston itself. You may be luckier depending on where you are in the area (i.e. even out in Worle, Wick, Lympsham to the south, its much much darker and they're not that far away!)

Feel free to ask any Weston/imaging question you like!

Cheers

Will

[Twisted Lip]

...oh and I also forgot to mention. Have a look in the classifies here, you don't necessarily have to buy things brand new. Astro stuff is generally very well cared for and loved so is almost always a good buy second hand

 

[ChrisWSM]

3 hours ago, Twisted Lip said:

Hi Chris and from a fellow Westoner, welcome!

As Sara says, mount is always absolutely key. For images of any length of time, a decent mount will be needed to (basically) keep your images steady and give you enough data. I use an Skywatcher NEQ6 which I like very much but definitely have a poke around the imaging forums and do a bit of research to find something that suits you. As far as a scope goes, it will entirely depend on what you want to image (at a basic level, deep sky vs planetary). Whilst you can get good scopes that will (sort of) handle both, a lot of the purists will have different scopes for different targets. Having said that, I'll let others recommend scopes! 

Finally, and something to consider...
I only moved back to Weston last year from Henley on Thames. Whereas in Henley I had lovely dark skies and could image quite happily with RGB (with a CCD camera) and even a DSLR (admittedly with a light pollution filter), the North Somerset skies and much less forgiving. I haven't managed to get out much in the last 6 months (mainly due to the usual house moving stuff) but from the testing I've done, imaging in narrow band (with CCD) appears to be the best option from the Weston skies (so far anyway!) A caveat here however, I'm north of Weston itself so the standard southern Deep Sky targets sit right in the light pollution of Weston itself. You may be luckier depending on where you are in the area (i.e. even out in Worle, Wick, Lympsham to the south, its much much darker and they're not that far away!)

Feel free to ask any Weston/imaging question you like!

Cheers

Will

Hi Will

Thank you so much. Sadly, I live pretty much in the centre of town, but I have a 12 foot Balcony that's East facing and fairly dark, however the skies above are orange! I'm not sure what to expect, but I want to be able to travel to remote locations such as those around Devon, to get clear skies. Camping trips are definitely on the cards!

Equipment wise... NO IDEA! Well... I've researched a lot and even understand "Narrow Band" (now that you've mentioned it and I've researched it haha).

In my previous role as a Technical Director, I worked on video compression techniques for surveillance systems, so the image crunching on the PC is absolutely up my street. I would appreciated an image that's taken hours of TLC to produce, far more than point and click. But I also want to have a good look around too. So I've a trade off between visual and photography.

If you ever need a coffee, I'd welcome the opportunity to buy you one and talk over (grill you) the subject. I'm at the point of purchase, but can't quite bring myself to click that "checkout" button .

Regards

Chris

[ChrisWSM]

On 16/03/2016 at 21:49, jorman said:

Hi,

I started in Astrophotography about eight years ago. I did not know anything about the hobby. I believe I have come a long way since and I had some images published.

I think that before you do anything you should read Ron Wodaski's The New CCD Astronomy book. It is over 400 pages and it comes in paper bag. It is worth its weight in gold. After you finished the book you will definitely know what you are talking about ! I consider it the CCD Bible. Even now I still go back to it when I have some doubts and/or questions. It covers all the topics you will eer need and then some....

Good luck,

Jorman

Hi Jorman

 

Thanks for the welcome... I've tried to find this book, but drawn a blank so far, but I'll definitely keep trying to find a copy. Thanks for the tip.

 

Regards

Chris

[Twisted Lip]

5 hours ago, ChrisWSM said:

If you ever need a coffee, I'd welcome the opportunity to buy you one and talk over (grill you) the subject. I'm at the point of purchase, but can't quite bring myself to click that "checkout" button .

Haha no problem at all, I can talk you through some of the mistakes I've made (of which there are many!).

Just drop me a PM and we can grab a coffee sometime

Cheers

Will