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New boy in the skies

Mick the Lob

By Mick the Lob,
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Mick the Lob

Mick the Lob 17

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Just got my first scope had a couple of casual looks around the sky this going to be a bit of a learning curve. Would like to get into Astro photography eventually. 

The ccd cameras are hugely expensive so would be going DSLR route. From what I can gather  I would also need a tracker other than the Audiostar system that’s currently part of my setup any suggestions as to which one would be helpful. 

Only ever used a DSLR on a normal tripod up to now with normal lenses. Here are few  that I have taken in the past. Would like get some moon shots, galaxy shots in fact anything st all really. 

C5A3172C-15A4-4D9D-8212-AC26CF57EC12.jpeg

768CD088-C596-4B7C-9F9C-8AFABA50F9EA.jpeg

ADE83226-9986-488A-B8D4-7BDBAD2429B4.jpeg

2758CF19-8249-46AC-98DC-C6A39662E3A0.jpeg

F33AA67D-051B-436D-B4C7-2D80233E40E3.jpeg

88BA6631-BEB5-4FC1-AF88-5B9E685D5BC9.jpeg

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Swoop1

Swoop1 1,320

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Some cracking images there Grommet (sorry, I mean Mick!).

What you will need for astrophotgraphys is a driven equatorial mount which will track the movements of the targets accross the sky as well as keeping the orientation of your telescope consistant with the target.

I don't know wheter your mount is an EQ (equatorial) or ALT/AZ (Altitude and Azimuth). The issue with ALT/AZ is that the telescope and therefore the camera stays on the same plane in exactly the same was as panning and tilting on a camera tripod. The movement of the styars accross the sky follws an arc so the telesope needs to move from east to west and also 'twist' so that the target remeains orientated the same way for the whole capture period.

A basic EQ mount would be a EQ3/2 like this which can be motorised-https://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-mounts/skywatcher-eq3-2-deluxe.html

Other optios are available with bigger capacity and slicker drives such as the HEQ5- https://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-mounts/skywatcher-heq5-pro-synscan.html

many options exist either side of the HEQ5 price point.

For straight DSLR astrophotography there are mounts like this that fix to your tripod- https://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-mounts/skywatcher-star-adventurer-astronomy-bundle.html

Good luck and enjoy.

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Mick the Lob

Mick the Lob 17

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Thank you chaps and chapesses think I will buy a wedge as my mount is Alt/Az l have eq mount that is motorised but have not got round to using it all's I will need is a dovetail to mount my camera on, with the static star trail stuff will I still need to take lots of say 30 second images and use star stacker to process the images. I will be limited to f5 with 440 mm of reach iso 1600 or 800 full frame. Think this should do assuming I manage to set up the mount correctly seems like a lot of messing around as far as I can see but the only way to keep things in registration. Could still use the lx90 as is for shorter exposures. Just got to learn to walk before i run.

20200121_164820.jpg

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