New to photography, which camera is best to photograph the night sky?

[Rshep]

Hello everyone, I am new to this site and also photography in general. Astrophotography has always interested me and I have decided to give photography a try. I am looking to get pictutes of the milkyway and the night sky in general. I know to do that, I need to go places with no light pollution and I plan on travelling to these parks to get good photos. Also, I do have a tripod as well. I am looking for suggestions on good entry level cameras that aren't too expensive, I am also looking into buying used for my first camera. Which cameras should I be looking into purchasing? Any help is appreciated!

[ronin]

Usually the weapon of choice is a Canon, although this seems based on the software Canon supply and which I suspect is little used. Looking at a record of transmission curves Canon do appear to pass more of the Ha portion then others do so Canon seems it.

Sounds like DSLR and DSLR lens only so a good lens is as ever best, aim at 20mm area initially, reasonably wide.

Now forget photography, with photography you aim the DSLR it does the autofocus, it sets the exposure length, it sets the aperture and it may set the iso and takes an exposure that is about 1/50 second.

AP: You set the exposure length, you set the ISO, you focus the lens, you take (say) 20 exposures. Each exposure is several seconds long 30 seconds is common. In that 30 seconds the object has moved so you need a tripod/mount that tracks across the sky at the correct rate. So a lot different.

Now you take the 20 exposures and load them into Deep Sky Stacker to stack one on the other (sort of add them up), then you might have a viewable picture/image.

Now you can to an extent get by with a fixed tripod and put the DSLR on that, but not sure how many exposures you will get before DSS just cannot realign them, it will not be many as the idea is you use a tracking mount. So the DSS software performs some alignment but it will I guess be limited.

Basically think it over, if you want to go on then fine. But realise that the "differences" are significant. A Canon on a tripod and getting say a set of ten twenty second exposures and stacking them in DSS can be done.  DSS will stack jpegs (the normal) but you should switch mode to RAW and these are bigger, much bigger.

To get the multiple images you will need an Intervalometer (Amazon about £20) also. After each exposure you take allow a period for the DSLR sensor to cool down. So a 20 second exposure becomes 30 or 40 seconds long.

Where are you ?

[MARS1960]

I would recommend the Canon 600D, or if your budget allows possibly a 60D or even a 70D.

The advantages of a swivel screen are very welcome with astrophotography, you also have live view mode and up to 10x mag and the 600D and 60D also have a 640-480 video crop mode which is great for lunar and planetary, on top of all that they are great terrestrial cameras too.

Also consider an astro modded version of the above for those HA emission nebula, correctly modded they can still be used for terrestrial use.

PS: for help with the basics try this.

 

Edited July 9, 2017 by MARS1960