Beginners astrophotography setup

[CaptainShiznit]

6 hours ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

If you want to do serious astrophotography, be prepared to spend a lot of money.  The requirements for planetaty imaging and deep-space imaging are quite different.

For planetary imaging you need a large-aperture, long focal length scope on a decent mount., plus a decent video camera such as the ASI224MC.  A SCT of 8" aperture or more is the kind of thing you want.  It is possible to use a lightweight (visual) mount because the post-processing covers a lot of sins, but a rigid and well-behaved mount makes the whole exercise less trying.  You don't need an equatorial mount, as the CPC mounts bundled with Celestron's SCTs work well, but this restricts you to visual observing and planetary imaging.

For deep space imaging, as others have pointed out, you need a solid eqatorial GoTo mount and a small fast telescope, plus a camera (usually a DSLR).  You could start with the Travelscope 70 - if nothing else you will discover at first hand why others use more expensive scopes of similar aperture.

Another option is to try EEVA (see sub-forum threads on this).  With whatever you have to hand, you can give this a try, and maybe get quick results that surpass what can be seen visually.  Don't underestimate what a small and inexpensive scope can do - I managed to image comets and Pluto with a 102mm Celestron Startravel achromat.

Thanks for this, it's answered one of my main questions about whether I could do both DSO and planetary with a single scope. I've decided to start out with a DSO setup and have already found a second hand HEQ5 mount to collect this weekend. I'm also looking to pick up a Canon 550d as they are a lot cheaper than the newer DSLRs I was looking at previously and have the live video cropping thing available for when I try out planetary imaging at some point with a different scope. I'm still deciding between the 130PDS and 150PDS scope.

[spillage]

Take a look here as this will help with understanding the fov. I think the 130pds is not listed but is the same fov as the 130p. You may also at some point want to purchase a coma corrector and if you go with the baader one there will be no change but the skywatcher one  would be x0.9 so give a slightly larger fov. Just click the imaging tab an add you scope and camera from the list and a target to see how the different kit changes the fov.