Advice please - Astrophotographer Noob

[coolbanana]

Hi there, 

My neighbours are into Astronomy and have a Celestron Nexstar 8SE for visual only. I have an old SkyWatcher but it is a real pain to use for Astrophotography, so I am wanting to upgrade. 

By way of background, I am an amateur photographer - have been for the last 14 years and prefer Wildlife and Landscapes but occasionally, I like to try my hand on other subjects too. 

I've taken to taking pictures of the Moon of late and doing ok with a Canon 5D Mk IV and 100-400 ii with 1.4x teleconverter on a tripod but really want to have a go with a telescope. The old Skywatcher Reflector doesn't seem to produce anything better than my camera lenses can offer.  I have been pondering getting a Nexstar Evolution 6 - to give me an effective 1500mm if I'm not mistaken - (budget constraints over the 8 and a knowledge that I will only ever be a casual Astronomer) but can't seem to find many images taken with DSLR's from one. I'm more interested in Lunar and Planets than deep space.

Anyone gone down that route with advice?

Or should I just get a really sturdy tripod, 2x teleconverter and stack 1.4x and 2x onto my 5D IV or 7D ii? Naturally, the relatively narrow aperture and degradation from stacked extenders are issues in themselves of course. 

[vlaiv]

Hi, welcome to SGL!

From what I've seen, being photographer is disadvantage in astro photography . Sorry to say that, but in reality you will need to unlearn what is applicable to photography, or just learn to ignore photography "common" sense and acknowledge that these are different.

If you are into planetary astro photography, provided that you have a tracking mount, your SkyWatcher reflector will do for starters. Your cameras will probably do for starters as well if they can shoot movies rather than still images. It would be best if your camera can shoot movie in raw format (without compression), but I'm not sure that is the case. Add a decent barlow (not needed from Moon), collimate your scope, and you are pretty much set to start doing some "serious" planetary AP.

You will need to learn a few concepts first - like: what is seeing and how to know good seeing vs bad seeing, how to optimize your setup to minimize seeing effects (let your scope cool, point it over grass rather than pavement that can absorb and release heat, avoid houses as they also release heat, etc ....). Look at couple of planetary imaging tutorials - you will need to understand what is image stacking, how to process your data, how to capture it. Look at software that is available for this purpose (FireCapture, SharpCap, Pipp, Registax, AS!3, etc ...).

Hope this helps.

Btw, Nexstar Evolution 6 is good telescope for planetary / Moon photography, but depending on your SkyWatcher aperture (and if it has tracking mount) - it might be better to use it instead of getting new scope.

[Mr niall]

Tracking mounts are only necessary when you need to take long exposures, due to the way stars move across the sky. You may be familiar with the 500 (or 600 according to some) rule which is that your effective maximum exposure in seconds before star trailing appears is 500/focal length. So a shot of the moon using a 1500mm would limit you to an exposure of 1/3 of a second.

The moon is actually the one target where that needn’t be a problem, and to a lesser extent planets too - cos they’re so bright you only need a very short exposure. 

Effectively that means you could get away with a static tripod on these targets, but you’d have considerably more options if you had a tracking mount; you could then use “lucky imaging” a method traditionally used whereby you take multiple images and stack them. Your biggest enemy will always be atmospheric turbulence, so the more images the better (hence the “lucky).

Below is the moon I took at 1250mm taken with an EOS1300d on static equatorial Mount with about a 50% crop. It’s about as close and as sharp as you’ll get and probably not the preferred method - hence the dearth of images.

[coolbanana]

Cheers for the replies! 

I'm leaning towards a new scope but will have another go with my existing one. 

These are a couple of cropped images from my DSLR and 100-400 lens with 1.4x teleconverter; so effective 560mm only. Obviously, I'd like to get closer! 

 

 

[vlaiv]

Nice images!

Getting your self a planetary kit does not need to cost a lot, and you can take some really good planetary images with simple kit.

This image for example has been taken with very "beginner" kind of scope / setup (Eq2 mount, 130/900 newtonian, QHY5LIIc camera):

click here for full resolution image: http://serve.trimacka.net/astro/2015-03-26/moon_composite_base.png

For lower price than Nexstar 6 Evolution you can have very good Moon / planetary setup - something like this:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/reflectors/skywatcher-explorer-150pl-ota.html

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-mounts/skywatcher-eq5-pro-synscan-goto.html

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/zwo-cameras/zwo-asi-385mc-usb-30-colour-camera.html

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/barlows/bst-starguider-2x-short-barlow-lens.html

totaling at about £1100 (vs £1350 Nexstar Evolution 6, without barlow and planetary camera).

[coolbanana]

1 minute ago, vlaiv said:

Nice images!

Getting your self a planetary kit does not need to cost a lot, and you can take some really good planetary images with simple kit.

This image for example has been taken with very "beginner" kind of scope / setup (Eq2 mount, 130/900 newtonian, QHY5LIIc camera):

click here for full resolution image: http://serve.trimacka.net/astro/2015-03-26/moon_composite_base.png

For lower price than Nexstar 6 Evolution you can have very good Moon / planetary setup - something like this:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/reflectors/skywatcher-explorer-150pl-ota.html

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-mounts/skywatcher-eq5-pro-synscan-goto.html

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/zwo-cameras/zwo-asi-385mc-usb-30-colour-camera.html

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/barlows/bst-starguider-2x-short-barlow-lens.html

totaling at about £1100 (vs £1350 Nexstar Evolution 6, without barlow and planetary camera).

Excellent! That's what I want to be able to do. 

Cheers, I will look at the links you have kindly provided. 

[Owmuchonomy]

If you seriously wish to pursue lunar and planetary imaging then the two priorities are long focal length and a high frame rate planetary camera. The options are described in the above replies. For these situations I image with either an ASI174 or ASI290 mono camera using a focal length around 5 metres. Some examples can be seen on my Flickr link. If you stick to lunar and solar then it’s possible to use a shorter focal length say 1.5 to 2.5 metres.

[happy-kat]

This is a poor example but I wanted to show something different. Heritage 130p static tripod and a sub £5 webcam (may or may not have had a 1.6x barlow I can't recall). The webcam was connected to a 7" android tablet to capture. This is just a screen grab of a reasonably stable moment of atmosphere (hence why video is used rather than single stills).  The same telescope with a Canon 1100d was full disc with lots of space. The other side of little as possible outlay.

I not suggesting this is the route to look into but just showing something else, you might want to read up into the differences obtained from different get and image scale (I think it is called that but I am sure someone will inject the right term if not) calculating.