Looking for ideas on photography kit please.

[Stewartfrom the Cotswolds]

Hi, I've been away from the hobby a while due to the poor tracking accuracy of a cheap Celestron goto mount. I have just bought a Skywatcher AZ-EQ6GT mount and excitedly awaiting its arrival, I hope this is going to be a good imaging mount but it was all I could afford right now. I have the Celestron Newtonian 130SLT tube assembly and some decent eyepieces, a Bahtinov mask and laser collumator. I want to be able to control the scope remotely from inside the house and use it for astrophotography so I'm looking for ideas on what I will need for connectivity eg. long usb cable hub power supply options for the whole rig etc and obviously a camera, want to get as far as possible with this tube before I then upgrade to something better.
Cheers
Stewart

[Ronclarke]

I use the new SW WiFi adaptor with my phone, more accurate than the SW handset!!

[Stewartfrom the Cotswolds]

Hi Ron do you ever have issue with signal loss using wifi I figure for this sort of thing and slight loss of comms count mean lots of lost time?

[happy-kat]

I'm not sure but your telescope may not reach focus with a DSLR without the use of say a x2 barlow which isn't ideal?

That's a nice new mount you've got incoming.

Do you want to also use the camera for daytime or is this a dedicated setup?

[Dave Lloyd]

The experts on here will all tell you the mount is by far THE most important part of any imaging rig. You've made a good start. 

 p.s I'm certainly not one of the experts on here. 

[Stewartfrom the Cotswolds]

Lol @Dave, I think that's what I like about this hobby so much, the depth of knowledge about everything is so vast even experts are always still learning.

@happy-kat I have a modified barlow which I can get focus on my dslr but I will be getting a dedicated imaging camera in time and will look closer at focusing options then. It might mean a whole new ota rather than spending lots of money on a dedicated remote focuser for the tube I have. 

[happy-kat]

If you need to use the barlow element to reach focus then I expect one choice is move the primary mirror up the tube to mitigate the need for the barlow. Using the barlow makes your telescope very slow as you are, if using a x2, doubling the focal length.

[Stewartfrom the Cotswolds]

Once I have the mount all set up and the tracking scope working and all the cables sorted I will be looking at a dedicated astronomy camera, I don't know if I will still need a 2x barlow with a proper imager or not.

The idea is to connect all the usb cables on the rig to a hub and then connect that hub to a usb-ethernet gizmo and have the whole lot at the end of a network cable connected to my computer in the lounge and fully remote controlled, or at least that's the plan.

[Whistlin Bob]

Hi Stewart,

A vote from me for the SW WiFi controller- it's really good.

One other option, if you've an old laptop at home, would be to connect that to the mount outside and control it remotely using TeamViewer (free if you're not a business). My WiFi reaches it fine (it's around thirty feet from my house) and works very nicely for remote control and checking your images.

[noah4x4]

On 14/02/2018 at 09:42, Whistlin Bob said:

Hi Stewart,

A vote from me for the SW WiFi controller- it's really good.

One other option, if you've an old laptop at home, would be to connect that to the mount outside and control it remotely using TeamViewer (free if you're not a business). My WiFi reaches it fine (it's around thirty feet from my house) and works very nicely for remote control and checking your images.

I too started with an 'old laptop' but eventually upgraded to an Intel NUC i5 when I bought an Atik Horizon. Large sensor megapixel cameras require a surprising amount of computing power and hard drive capacity. 

TeamViewer is a good starter option,  but I found it a bit too laggy for more advanced stuff like remote focussing because the 'free' version runs over the Internet. The better solution is Windows 10 Pro and it's Remote Desktop when run peer to peer over a local 802.11ac (5Ghz) LAN. If your current home network offers only 2.4Ghz (802.11n) it is quite easy to upgrade using a cheap dual band Wireless Range Extender (£20) and (if necessary) plug in USB dual band wireless adapters (£12) in the two laptops. It is great to be cable free between telescope and laptop.

[Stewartfrom the Cotswolds]

Well the story so far, and I almost can't believe this all works.  I've now got the mount connected directly without hand controller to a usb hub via a HitecAstro EqDirect cable, the hub then connects to a usb ethernet server module which then all links back to the main computer in my lounge via ethernet, starting Stellarium scope, starts stellarium and EQmod, so I can use the main computer to remotely control the scope fifty feet away in the garden. If I'm at the scope I can control stellarium on the main pc via remote desktop app on my iphone, I mean WTF what an amazing system, and it works.