Astrophotography Shootout £6k vs £600

[Stu]

Interesting and fun shootout from Astrobiscuit here. I’m not an imager at all but still enjoyed it.

Perhaps some hope and inspiration for budget restricted aspiring astrophotographers?

[Paul73]

Very good. He certainly has a talent for making videos.

I bet that it wouldn’t work like that if I tried it!!

Paul

[AngryDonkey]

Surely round stars are worth 5400 Pound!? 🤣

[Chris]

What brilliant production values and humour! This guys brilliant, I'm off to subscribe to his channel. 

[Skyline]

Very good video, nearly bought a 383 camera from the chap, he's just a stone throw away where I live.

[RT65CB-SWL]

He is a.k.a. @rorymultistorey on here, i.e. SGL. 

[Chris]

This video was also fun

 

[tomato]

Another hugely entertaining video.  It’s hard enough imaging with two rigs, let alone making a video of it.

[ollypenrice]

I think it's time for the imaging snobs to fight back! I'm terrific looking (no really, I just checked) and have a great sense of humour (seriously) and you can't fault me for the fortune I've sunk in imaging gear. I just need a good director and video editor to help me reassert the virtues of intemperate spending. Sponsors, anyone? Roll up, roll up...

😁lly

[Magnum]

Feel like ive just watched the astronomy version of Richard Hammond from Top Gear, 

not sure if thats a good thing or a bad thing lol

Lee

[RT65CB-SWL]

16 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

I think it's time for the imaging snobs to fight back! I'm terrific looking (no really, I just checked) and have a great sense of humour (seriously) and you can't fault me for the fortune I've sunk in imaging gear. I just need a good director and video editor to help me reassert the virtues of intemperate spending. Sponsors, anyone? Roll up, roll up...

😁lly

But, do you have a Pink Bunny...? 

[ollypenrice]

1 minute ago, Philip R said:

But, do you have a Pink Bunny...? 

I might have!

Olly

[RobertI]

I love that video. Steve Buscemi takes his telescope to be sawn in half by Chris Squire (bassist from Yes). Surreal but entertaining.

[gorann]

Very professional and entertaining, quite amazing really - just like Top  Gear! He forgot about the collimation part of a scope that just got nearly cut in half at the local garage, but never mind. And at the end the mesage was the usual one - spend your money on the mount first😅

[DaveS]

On 05/05/2020 at 20:57, ollypenrice said:

I think it's time for the imaging snobs to fight back! I'm terrific looking (no really, I just checked) and have a great sense of humour (seriously) and you can't fault me for the fortune I've sunk in imaging gear. I just need a good director and video editor to help me reassert the virtues of intemperate spending. Sponsors, anyone? Roll up, roll up...

😁lly

*sniff* £6k? I spent more than that on my DDM60 *sniff*

/snob

 

Actually brilliant video, loved it!

[JeremyS]

Brilliant stuff. Thanks for posting @Stu

[ollypenrice]

9 hours ago, DaveS said:

*sniff* £6k? I spent more than that on my DDM60 *sniff*

/snob

 

Actually brilliant video, loved it!

Yes, £6K really was a rather derisory sum! 🤣  More beer and skittles than croquet, what?

 

[Alien 13]

I do like these videos, the £100 Jupiter challenge is worth watching too. Need a red bunny light now, has to be better than a fiddly red torch.

Alan

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Good stuff, applaud the idea and invention. I've been thinking on similar lines, about how far a real budget setup can be pushed as one of my Autumn projects. Could be a fun thing to do while I have my 1600MM cool shooting away on a scope again. This qualifies as a budget image, an RGBHa collaboration between two 135mm lenses on an old modded DSLR.

But it's not quite as budget as I'd like as I used my £300 Samyang 135mm f2 to shoot the Ha rather than the £18 60s era Takumar 135mm f3.5. I could have got a similar result with the old lens with a bit more integration time.

The advantage of a simple rig like this is that it absolutely works every time and is forgiving to use, sloppy polar alignment doesn't matter much and it's easy to find targets with such a wide field of view. This is ideal for UK skies where imaging time is limited. I didn't have to use any DIY skills to put it together (had the camera modded for me) and it doesn't require a laptop. Something like this could realistically be put together for under £600, including the Ha clip-in filter.

AP doesn't have to be an expensive hobby (in monetary terms anyway, it's definitely a time sink). Pretty much anyone who really gets into AP is going to want to move to a smaller pixel scale, in the image above shock fronts are starting to show but it needs more detail to do these objects justice. But I think budget setups have plenty of untapped potential, something like a Cygnus mosaic wouldn't be that difficult to put together.

Then someone else can make a video about how I'm off my rocker for spending £600, showing me what can be done with a mobile phone and department store scope.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Knight of Clear Skies

[happy-kat]

Does my manual barn door that reliably does 180 second exposures at 40mm focal length count? No tripod needed as self contained and made from bits, most expensive item after the camera was the ball head at £15 or so. 

[Knight of Clear Skies]

5 hours ago, happy-kat said:

Does my manual barn door that reliably does 180 second exposures at 40mm focal length count? No tripod needed as self contained and made from bits, most expensive item after the camera was the ball head at £15 or so. 

Just a thought, but have you ever tried putting a mobile phone an your barn door tracker? Would be very interested to see what this combination could do in the Autumn, with the Milky Way high overhead.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Knight of Clear Skies

[happy-kat]

That might work very well, but unfortunately my mobile doesn't use the revised camera version so it doesn't do night photography. 

[rorymultistorey]

Hi all thanks so much @Super Novafor sharing my vid. Finally got one to fly... only taken 3 years!!!! Really appreciate the nice comments. I hope you understand that this video is aimed at getting more people into this terrific hobby and that I had to cut a lot of stuff out bc unless you are a true geek (which lets be honest everyone here is) collimation and modding the camera is a bit boring. However I am currently in negotiation with Mrs biscuit thinking about taking some time off work to make some more vids. I'm not a big fan of my job and I'd love to do this full time but money wise its just not feasable.

 

Next video plans are...

Ultimate Shot of Mars : Brits vs Yanks - I was chatting to a chap who had a 24" newt in his garage. Annoyingly I can't find his email but I'd love to joint forces with someone and  resurrect a big old newt and try and take on some of the guys with Big Newts in the US. I know they'd probably win - better weather / better declination (in florida anyway) - but it would be fun. 

Astrophotography shoot out part 2: we now have an amazing mount courtesy of Peter Napper and i'm planning on pimping up a 6 inch newt (in fact the newt I chopped - the Edmund Scientific - has an extraordinarily nice f6 mirror (I now regret cutting it down. I know. please don't rub it in). I think that mirror with a smaller secondary will be good. Possibly upgrade to a 6D if I can find a cheap one. In a way this video will be refractors vs reflectors.

The Answer to Life the Universe and Everything - I got in touch with Dr Stuart Clarke and it turns out we have something in common. We don't like where physics is heading at the moment. We think dark matter and dark energy are follies and I think that  we're missing something fundemantal about the way the Universe works. I'd like to meet the rogue scientists who are trying to find out what that thing is. 

various small vids for geeks  - to modify or not to modify, free post processing, astrophotography with your mobile phone etc

anyways any other ideas most welcome.

Take care all and thanks again.

 

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Thanks for putting together the video and some good ideas for further ones there.

6 minutes ago, rorymultistorey said:

We think dark matter and dark energy are follies and I think that  we're missing something fundemantal about the way the Universe works. I'd like to meet the rogue scientists who are trying to find out what that thing is.

A word of caution here. Dark matter is is a very strong hypothesis with multiple lines of evidence pointing to its existence, such as the rotation curves of galaxies, distribution of mass in galaxy clusters and oscillations in the Cosmic Microwave Background. We also know of one barely-interacting particle, the neutrino, which can pass through a light year of lead. Competing theories, such as modified Newtonian dynamics, utterly fail to explain the motion in dark-matter dominated galaxies such as the Draco Dwarf. It's the simplest hypothesis that explains the evidence, it's certainly no folly.

There is a careful balance to be struck between open-mindedness, there are unsolved problems in cosmology and we certainly don't understand the full picture, and credulousness.

[rorymultistorey]

41 minutes ago, Knight of Clear Skies said:

Thanks for putting together the video and some good ideas for further ones there.

A word of caution here. Dark matter is is a very strong hypothesis with multiple lines of evidence pointing to its existence, such as the rotation curves of galaxies, distribution of mass in galaxy clusters and oscillations in the Cosmic Microwave Background. We also know of one barely-interacting particle, the neutrino, which can pass through a light year of lead. Competing theories, such as modified Newtonian dynamics, utterly fail to explain the motion in dark-matter dominated galaxies such as the Draco Dwarf. It's the simplest hypothesis that explains the evidence, it's certainly no folly.

There is a careful balance to be struck between open-mindedness, there are unsolved problems in cosmology and we certainly don't understand the full picture, and credulousness.

Red Dwarf thx. I hope you take my thoughts in the right spirit. (This is good practise for the video if it ever gets made)

I think Physics needs a kick up the behind. Over the last 20 years a lot of money and experiments been pumped into dark matter. Thousands , probably tens of thousands of  research jobs depend on dark matter being the leading theory. Millions of pounds worth of grants rely on it too. Cern was suppossed to prove dark matter. Now the physicist are  saying that they need another 10 years (long enough to be paid until retirement perhaps) to prove that dark matter actually exists... which is exactly what they said 10 years ago. Particle physics  could well be a victim of its own fantastic success.  In the last twenty years you'd be forgiven for believing that the answer to every new physics problem has to be a particle. There are other theories like MOND which get nothing like the cash or research time which dark matter gets and yet MOND  believers claim their model works more elegantly over a broader range  of galaxies than dark matter. A case of a small band of physicists  battling the establishment like David versus Goliath. (TBH I don't know about draco dwarf galaxies but the MONDS team have mud to sling at the Dark matter crew too) Surely if Dark matter was true Goliath would have stomped all over the MONDs team by now.   My broader point is that physics promotes the status quo which is why the greatest breakthoughs have  not come from the establishment but from outsiders...  

So am I be credulous... or is the system closed minded? And does that closed mindedness come from a desire to protect jobs and funding. I have the right to question. It is after all our money that pays for dark matter research... and string theory and other theories that seem to be banging their head against the wall.