Potential Upgrade Solutions

[Gerry Casa Christiana]

Hello all

As I hope to improve my astrophotography pictures with my current setup of a Skywatcher 150pds Canon 550d modified on EQ-6 all with guiding etc  

I'm thinking about either buying another telescope so I can do deeper field. What's a good upgrade from this scope where I can do deeper field and also improve on my astrophotography. I was thinking about a astro tech or maybe a Celestron 925 or silimar. I would love a Celestron EDGE but money won't stretch that far .

Thanks for any advice. 

 

Gerry

[alacant]

Hi. In a similar situation and fed up with galaxies being tiny blobs, I kept it simple and got a 6" f8. Cheap, straightforward but with super sharp images, guiding at 1200mm on an eq6 becomes super critical but well worth the effort. OTOH, if you're looking at Celestron type reflectors, 1200mm isn't going to be enough:( HTH anyway.

Comparison photos: 150 f5, 150 f8

[kens]

I doubt a new OTA would make much difference. A Celestron 925 may well overload your mount and make things worse. The biggest improvements I got over the years were from getting a better focuser and then a motor focuser and from tuning my mount and then getting a much better mount. These changes give me smaller, sharper stars and pull out more detail from all objects.

You could also consider a cooled camera (assuming it isn't already) and maybe try narrow band?

 

[Gerry Casa Christiana]

10 hours ago, alacant said:

Hi. In a similar situation and fed up with galaxies being tiny blobs, I kept it simple and got a 6" f8. Cheap, straightforward but with super sharp images, guiding at 1200mm on an eq6 becomes super critical but well worth the effort. OTOH, if you're looking at Celestron type reflectors, 1200mm isn't going to be enough:( HTH anyway.

Comparison photos: 150 f5, 150 f8

What make are those telescopes Alscant if you don't mind me asking. 

Yes its a good idea but I'm not sure what reflectors to go for. Any particular that prove to be good?

Thanks

Gerry

[alacant]

13 hours ago, kens said:

I doubt a new OTA would make much difference.

Then I've misread. I thought the OP was looking for a longer focal length. Sorry.

[alacant]

3 hours ago, Gerry Casa Christiana said:

What make are those

Hi. They're Bresser Newtonians e.g. the nt150. If you have the mount, they do optic tube only. IMHO much less flimsy than the rolled steel sw models and the 2 1/2" focuser really sets them apart. HTH

[kens]

2 minutes ago, alacant said:

Then I've misread. I thought the OP was looking for a longer focal length. Sorry.

OP was wanting to go deeper field so longer focal length was implied but it is not necessarily the right approach. The Canon 550D has 4.3um pixels and the 150pds has 750mm FL giving  a pixel scale of 1.18"/pixel. So there's little to be gained by going to a smaller pixel scale. What's needed to go deeper is better focus, longer integration time, tighter guiding and lower camera noise for faint objects.

[alacant]

1 hour ago, kens said:

deeper field

Ah, OK. I found that moving from 750mm to 1200mm made a difference to the objects by making them bigger. Enlarging the smaller images just made them fuzzy. I'm sure a longer telescope isn't the only way, but it costs a lot less than a new camera!

[spillage]

I think the op may mean wider fov..If that is the case have you looked at maybe getting the 130pds as a cheap alternative? . It might also be worth doing the belt mod on your mount to improve tracking for longer exposures.

[DaveS]

I found the greatest jump in my AP was when I went to cooled mono and filters. Maybe an ASI1600MM Cool plus wheel and at least LRGB, possibly adding the H-alpha if funds permit, or else getting the MB set later.