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First go at M101 Pinwheel Galaxy
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By Ryan Adams
Hi there,
I recently posted a thread getting ideas for what scope and mount I should get for beginner astrophotography.
After researching on my own and getting thoughts from others on scopes and mounts here is what I have come up with.
Mount - Skywatcher EQ5 GOTO
Scope - Sky-Satcher Explorer 130P-DS
Guide Scope - Skywatcher Evoguide ED50
Guide Camera - ZWO ASI120MM Mini
DSLR - Canon 350D
I understand that the camera I am using is fairly old but it is an old DSLR that I have at home and it saves me money on buying a new camera. All in all this setup comes to just over £1000; I just wanted to people's get thoughts on this set up and if it can be improved in any way without stretching the budget by more than £100. Also I wanted to know whether any of the equipment I have chosen isn't great.
Thanks in advance,
Ryan
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By crossingsymmetry
Greetings everyone.
I recently scored a great deal on facebook marketplace and bought Skywatcher Skymax 180 mm Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescope (f/15) with EQ6R-pro mount. I understand that long focal length telescopes are more suitable for planetary imaging. However, as I am tight on budget, I would like to use the same scope for deep-sky astrophotography. I have Canon Rebel T5 DSLR camera that I am using for taking images. Without autoguiding and a decent polar alignment, I can get ~30 seconds long shots without any star trailing, but that's not sufficient for imaging objects like M51. I would like to be able to integrate longer, say few minutes, thus would like to purchase an autoguider. Here are some specific questions I have.
1). The telescope comes with an 8 x 50 straight-through finder. If I were to use it as a guidescope, what type of image integration time can I expect? Has anyone done autoguiding for f/15 scope with an 8x50 or other finderscopes?
2). If the integration time will be an issue with the 8x50 finder scope, I am open to purchasing an off-axis-guider. However, considering the narrow field-of-view of Mak-180 telescope, I am concerned about not having enough photons from guidestar for autoguiding. For instance, with my DSLR camera, I need to integrate 20-30 seconds to see the nearby stars in M51. What type of OAG and camera would I need to autoguide with my scope? Are there affordable cameras (~$200) that would do the job for me? Would ASI120MM Mini Monochrome (~$150) do the job? What about OAG?
I plan to use phd2 software for autoguiding rather than relying on the build-in guide port on the mount. Instead of integrating for hours, I am planning to do DSS stacking of few mintues long multiple shots, hopefully this will put less strict requirements on the autoguider.
In case this information is relevant: with my current setup, I have no issue pointing my scope to a desired deep-sky object, track the object within the field-of-view of my DSLR camera for hours using the mechnical tracking of the EQ6 mount. For instance following is a single raw image of Ring nebula taken with 30 seconds shot. But it is not enough for generating high-quality images.
Thank you in advance for your help.
Regards,
Jay
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By Camalajs525
Since I am very new to this, I struggle a lot. Especially when observing planets and also recently deep sky objects. My telescope is an amateur telescope and its almost 11 years old (The telescope was re used a year ago). During summer of last year I took photos of Saturn,Jupiter and a month ago took photos of Venus and Mars. About 2 days ago I stumbled upon a new thing in the sky, (Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture). It definitely was in the Orion constellation as I had observed Betelgeuse and the 3 stars that were close to each other. After a couple of minutes later I saw 2 stars next to each other and another two which were on top of the other star, surrounding these set of stars were a blue-ish and grey-ish colour at the same time. I had done some research and many people told me it was the trapezium cluster found in Orion. I honestly don't know. Any ideas? Thanks.
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By stevewanstall
Celestron 9.25 at f6.3, SW EQ6R pro, Canon 550 D modded
The galaxy group Hickson 44 in Leo. This is based on 29 x 240 s, plus bias and flats.
Hickson 44 in Leo:
There are some other galaxies near by, some of which are names in this overlay from Astrometry.net:
Overlay from Astrometry, naming the other objects:
The main ones are NGC 3190, NGC 3185, NGC 3187 and NGC 3193. NGC 3190 has a well defined dust lane. NGC 3187 is a barred spiral galaxy with two arms. NGC 3193 is an elliptical galaxy.
The light captured by my camera last night left these galaxies just after the extinction event killed the dinosaurs on Earth.
From APOD: Galaxies, like stars, frequently form groups. A group of galaxies is a system containing more than two galaxies but less than the tens or hundreds typically found in a cluster of galaxies. A most notable example is the Local Group of Galaxies, which houses over 30 galaxies including our Milky Way, Andromeda, and the Magellanic Clouds. Pictured above is nearby compact group Hickson 44. This group is located about 60 million light-years away toward the constellation of Leo. Also known as the NGC 3190 Group, Hickson 44 contains several bright spiral galaxies and one bright elliptical galaxy on the upper right. The bright source on the upper left is a foreground star. Many galaxies in Hickson 44 and other compact groups are either slowly merging or gravitationally pulling each other apart.
Abell 1367
This image is based on 19 x 300 s , plus flats and bias. It shows a LOT of galaxies, in a grouping called Abell 1367. In this image you are looking at part of one of the biggest structures in the Universe, the Great Wall.
Wikipedia:
The Leo Cluster (Abell 1367) is a galaxy cluster about 330 million light-years distant (z = 0.022) in the constellation Leo, with at least 70 major galaxies. The galaxy known as NGC 3842 is the brightest member of this cluster. Along with the Coma Cluster, it is one of the two major clusters comprising the Coma Supercluster, which in turn is part of the CfA2 Great Wall, which is hundreds of millions light years long and is one of the largest known structures in the universe.
The overlay from Astrometry gives some of the galaxies visible in the image.
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By mdstuart
The August galaxy of the month (the 100th one actually) from the Webb Society is NGC 7042 in Pegasus.
https://www.webbdeepsky.com/galaxies/2019/
So I thought, better get that new 20 inch dob out and try it. The sky was a bit milky and there was a lot of high cloud around but that was not going to stop me!
Well I found NGC 7042 fairly easily. You can tell its a spiral as it has that characteristic low surface brightness glow across its entire face. It sits next to a triangle of stars. I then worked hard to see if I could see NGC 7043. I could not see it last time I tried when I had a 14 inch scope. Well this time I got it just! Very faint even with averted vision but definitely there. I managed to see stars to mag 14.9 despite the poor skies.
Here is my observation:
I also had a look at a few more galaxies on my target list, IC 1473 in Pegasus (within a triangle of stars) and IC1550 in Andromeda. That brings my total galaxies observed up to 1800.
Here is IC1550 from Aladin. Perhaps not galaxy of the month but it was special to me as no 1800 and it looks lovely next to that field star. I read that it is about 275 million light years away behind the Perseus-Pisces supercluster wall of galaxies.
Another great night of observing with the new 20 inch scope.
Do give any of the above targets a go as they are well placed to the east at the moment (which is best for me over the Cotswolds!) and let me know how you get on.
Thank you to Owen for the inspiration.
Mark
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