What targets will be possible to photograph on a non-driven mount

[PESKYWAABBIT]

Hey guys, I've been asked to present a talk to my local astronomy group about astrophotography and I need some advice. I personally use a motorised HEQ5 8" reflector with an autoguider to do my astrophotography however most of our members have non-motorised and smaller sized reflectors. 

What targets(if any) would you reckon could be photographed with a non-motorised telescope without too much drift being shown. I know the moon is an easy target or maybe even the M42 to start with due to the brightness and lack of exposure time required, but I was curious as to what other objects I could suggest them attempt to capture without having to break the bank and getting a motorised mount at the moment. Obviously I would recommend that if they considered following the hobby further down the rabbit hole to invest in a motorised mount or even a autoguider if they wanted to see further improvements. 

What sort of limit of magnitude would you reckon would be for capturing unguided on an Celestron AstroMaster 114EQ?

Thanks for any advice!

- Pesky

[newtyng5]

I am probably stating the obvious. With unguided imaging you are going to be limited to the moon and planets (shame the planets are not very favourably placed for us in the UK at the moment), because you will be limited by exposure time. But you could definitely image some open clusters, double stars, and perhaps a few globular clusters.

All the best!

[Stu]

This is an iPhone image taken through a 100mm refractor, M42 as you can hopefully tell  

I reckon that with a better camera you could probably stack a whole load or short (1 second) exposures and get a result of some sort on the brighter objects. Low power on open clusters might work ok, or higher power on brighter stuff like globs. Forget the faint fuzzies!

I’ve added another iPhone shot of Jupiter so you can see what is possible with a single shot, non tracking mount.

[happy-kat]

You can do astro images using a camera and lens, lovely wide field images, or what about star trails. Lovely landscape shots with a star field behind. Take multiple images and stack using DSS or if there is foreground like trees or a building etc use Sequator to stack.

[happy-kat]

Ignoring planets as that has been covered using a static mount (though a webcam might be better than a camera), if already own camera gear then the cheapest next step I think is a star adventurer and if the bugs bites further that mount might become a portable dark site option. 

 

[Olli]

Here’s a video that might be useful to you