First refractor for imaging

[Paolo Silvestri]

Greetings everyone, I am a student with a recent strong interest in astrophotography. I currently use a Nikon D3300 and I plan to get for my graduation a small refractor and a tracker mount, most likely a star adventurer. My question is, which is the best/most stuitable apochromatic refractor to use with the SA? The budget would be around 1000€ for all the setup. Thank you in advance and clear skies!! 

[Anthonyexmouth]

im in the same boat, ive got a star adventurer and having a £1000 is huge for starting. at the moment im torn between waiting for the skywatcher ed72 to finally come back into stock or bit the bullet and get either a william optics zenithstar 61 or the ts photoline 72 the skywatcher is cheapest and the last 2 are £400ish

[Galen Gilmore]

Would the star adventurer even have the capacity to support something as heavy as an APO refractor? From what I can see it's a a mount for mounting camera lenses on it directly.

I was wondering this same thing when trying to decide my overall setup, and they warned me against the SA if I choose to do scope imaging.

maybe a better option would be something like a 200-300mm telephoto lens, although I'm not an expert on lenses so take my word with a grain of salt.

[pipnina]

I have seen people use small scopes on the star adventurer, though they had to balance it and polar align immaculately which would provide challenges unwelcome to a beginner.

Given the budget, I think you will be better suited to combining the star adventurer with a medium focal length DSLR lens. My Sigma 105:f2.8 has done well (though it is a macro lens and does not perform as well at infinity). There will be cheaper options at higher focal lengths for an APS-C sensor however.

For proper telescopic imaging, you go down a rabbit hole of expense (where the most expensive part is the mount you put it on!). A telescope might set you back but £150, but the mount you put it on is likely to cost £750 upwards! Even then you would need some form of guiding to achieve exposures longer than a minute or two.

With basic camera lenses and the star adventurer however, you can get 5 minutes upwards with no guiding at 55mm, 2-3 minutes at 105 (with only basic polar alignment and no balancing). The SA is a good bit of kit, but it won't carry your telescope to great results.

[Anthonyexmouth]

27 minutes ago, Galen Gilmore said:

Would the star adventurer even have the capacity to support something as heavy as an APO refractor? From what I can see it's a a mount for mounting camera lenses on it directly.

I was wondering this same thing when trying to decide my overall setup, and they warned me against the SA if I choose to do scope imaging.

maybe a better option would be something like a 200-300mm telephoto lens, although I'm not an expert on lenses so take my word with a grain of salt.

The Zenithstar 61 is only 1.5kg, the swsa can handle 5kg. at the moment i have a skymax 90 + asi290 and my canon 760d with ballhead and 55-250mm lens and it handles it very well. 

[Paolo Silvestri]

I forgot to mention, the purpose of the lens would be capturing nebulae like the Orion one, Soul and Heart maybe and, why not, even Andromeda or other visible galaxies at max 400mm. So I've considered even taking a 100-400 lens from Sigma or Tamron, but I don't know how do they perform cause on Astrobin (I saw a lot of samples) there is not too much. My biggest concern is about the focal lenght: would images taken at 400mm be sharp as 100mm? Btw on Astrobin there are a lot of samples of pictures taken using a 72mm refractor on a star adventurer or skyguider pro from Ioptron. If someone has more info on telelens up to 400mm I will gladly consider them, cause astrophoto is not the main genre of photo I take.

[Anthonyexmouth]

a used sigma is gonna cost you more than a new dedicated scope would and still weigh nearly as much. save the camera lens idea for widefield milky way shots at much lower focal lengths. my plan after i've got a z61 or similar is to get a good prime lens for my dslr, probably a 16mm samyang

[pipnina]

2 hours ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

The Zenithstar 61 is only 1.5kg, the swsa can handle 5kg. at the moment i have a skymax 90 + asi290 and my canon 760d with ballhead and 55-250mm lens and it handles it very well.

And a washing line clip? ?

20 minutes ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

a used sigma is gonna cost you more than a new dedicated scope would and still weigh nearly as much. save the camera lens idea for widefield milky way shots at much lower focal lengths. my plan after i've got a z61 or similar is to get a good prime lens for my dslr, probably a 16mm samyang

You make a good point. My 130-PDS + baader coma corrector cost about the same as my Sigma macro lens, on value terms there is a clear winner here.

[Anthonyexmouth]

2 minutes ago, pipnina said:

And a washing line clip? ?

You make a good point. My 130-PDS + baader coma corrector cost about the same as my Sigma macro lens, on value terms there is a clear winner here.

i've only just added the clothes peg today to help with fine focusing. the focus know is quite narrow so hard to adjust, even the feel is so much better. hoping it stays clear tonight to test it. 

[Anthonyexmouth]

a rear view with the clothes peg mod. very technical, i'd probably lose you if i went into detail how i made all the calculation to make it work. 

[pipnina]

1 minute ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

a rear view with the clothes peg mod. very technical, i'd probably lose you if i went into detail how i made all the calculation to make it work.

A marvel of modern engineering, to be sure!

[Anthonyexmouth]

The difficult part was finding the right colour peg. 

[Paolo Silvestri]

47 minutes ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

a used sigma is gonna cost you more than a new dedicated scope would and still weigh nearly as much. save the camera lens idea for widefield milky way shots at much lower focal lengths. my plan after i've got a z61 or similar is to get a good prime lens for my dslr, probably a 16mm samyang

I started considering the WO z61 after Trevor from Astrobackyard's review, though with the field flattener it will cost around 800€. At the same price there is the TS optics imaging star 65q which is a quadruplet, so no flattener required. 

[happy-kat]

Samyang 135mm f2 that's been used to take cracking images of the targets you mention and members use it wide open.

[Anthonyexmouth]

11 minutes ago, Paolo Silvestri said:

I started considering the WO z61 after Trevor from Astrobackyard's review, though with the field flattener it will cost around 800€. At the same price there is the TS optics imaging star 65q which is a quadruplet, so no flattener required. 

That can't be right. Z61 is £400 and the flattener is £150ish

[Davey-T]

4 minutes ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

That can't be right. Z61 is £400 and the flattener is £150ish

That's right gotta make their money somewhere 

Dave

[Paolo Silvestri]

5 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

Samyang 135mm f2 that's been used to take cracking images of the targets you mention and members use it wide open.

I'm afraid that short focal lenght (in comparison to a 300-360mm scope) would not be enough to capture much details. I'd like to get a picture of only Andromeda or only Orion nebula with almost no surrounding at all.

1 minute ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

That can't be right. Z61 is £400 and the flattener is £150ish

Well the price in euro is slightly different. The scope is 530€ and the flattener is 190. And yes I was wrong, it is 720€ (636£) but still not so different from a quadruplet. Idk now

[Anthonyexmouth]

1 minute ago, Paolo Silvestri said:

I'm afraid that short focal lenght (in comparison to a 300-360mm scope) would not be enough to capture much details. I'd like to get a picture of only Andromeda or only Orion nebula with almost no surrounding at all.

Well the price in euro is slightly different. The scope is 530€ and the flattener is 190. And yes I was wrong, it is 720€ (636£) but still not so different from a quadruplet. Idk now

What's the weight of the quad? 

[Paolo Silvestri]

9 minutes ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

What's the weight of the quad? 

2.8 kg or 6.2 lbs, with 420 focal lenght at 65mm aperture. My only concern is about the lenght, cause I've read the SA has some issues in tracking with 400+mm lens.

[Anthonyexmouth]

You've got to be well polar aligned but that goes for any mount. I've heard that anything similar to the z61 is ideal for it. 

[alexbb]

If I were you, I'd go for a second hand EQ5 and put a set of motors and enhanced controller (which supports guiding too) to drive it. I've one setup like this and it costed me about 300€. It should be a lot sturdier than the star adventurer and you can put some heavier stuff on it for visual observing.

The TS 72ED F/6 + 0.79x reducer/flattener combo costs 664€, the SW 72ED + dedicated flattener cost 490€ at FLO. Neither of them has a finder included in the package.

Add a guiding scope and camera bundle at ~200€ and you're at 1000€ with the SW, a bit more with the TS scope.

[Paolo Silvestri]

3 hours ago, moise212 said:

If I were you, I'd go for a second hand EQ5 and put a set of motors and enhanced controller (which supports guiding too) to drive it. I've one setup like this and it costed me about 300€. It should be a lot sturdier than the star adventurer and you can put some heavier stuff on it for visual observing.

The TS 72ED F/6 + 0.79x reducer/flattener combo costs 664€, the SW 72ED + dedicated flattener cost 490€ at FLO. Neither of them has a finder included in the package.

Add a guiding scope and camera bundle at ~200€ and you're at 1000€ with the SW, a bit more with the TS scope.

Already considered that option, but the fact is I'd rather use more portable setup. Plus, I mainly shoot landscapes and timelapse, that setup would be a waste in my hands. Besides, in used markets I haven't found anything close to that price. I feel a serious eq mount should be used often, I can rarely find some time for me to shoot, that's the problem sadly.

[pipnina]

10 minutes ago, Paolo Silvestri said:

I feel a serious eq mount should be used often, I can rarely find some time for me to shoot, that's the problem sadly.

Your equipment should be used only as frequently as you enjoy using it

Using your kit at every available opportunity, regardless of whether you are in the mood, can only lead to burnout.

 

Desiring a portable setup capable of timelapse is absolutely understandable, and is a much better reason to go for a star adventurer than time value in my opinion.

[alexbb]

10 minutes ago, Paolo Silvestri said:

Already considered that option, but the fact is I'd rather use more portable setup. Plus, I mainly shoot landscapes and timelapse, that setup would be a waste in my hands. Besides, in used markets I haven't found anything close to that price. I feel a serious eq mount should be used often, I can rarely find some time for me to shoot, that's the problem sadly.

I then support the others' opinion that a 300mm + lens/scope will make imaging difficult, perhaps a shorter FL lens would be a better match

[Paolo Silvestri]

16 minutes ago, moise212 said:

I then support the others' opinion that a 300mm + lens/scope will make imaging difficult, perhaps a shorter FL lens would be a better match

So, should I go for the WO Z61 (360mm) even though there is a quad for about only 50€ more? Anyway thanks for the suggestions.