Old Nikon + Heritage 130

[Blackware]

I just got into observing and would love to be able to take a picture of what I'm seeing. I got an old Nikon D60 from 2012? laying here still working perfectly with multiple lenses. I did some research and found I should buy some kind of T-ring as an adapter between the telescope and camera. Is this the only thing I need to take an image ? 

Thanks in advance!

[rnobleeddy]

It's unlikely that the heritage will be able to focus with the camera, so it's common to use a Barlow lens in-between the camera the scope. Barlow's often come with a t thread as I guess this is  a common usage.

 

For various reasons that I'll let someone else explain, using a Barlow isn't idea for serious astrophotography of deep space objects, but for £30 I found it was a decent way to get started!

[Blackware]

44 minutes ago, rnobleeddy said:

It's unlikely that the heritage will be able to focus with the camera, so it's common to use a Barlow lens in-between the camera the scope. Barlow's often come with a t thread as I guess this is  a common usage.

 

For various reasons that I'll let someone else explain, using a Barlow isn't idea for serious astrophotography of deep space objects, but for £30 I found it was a decent way to get started!

So a Barlow would help focussing, but then a barlow isn't for astrophotography ? Couldn't I just manually focus with the camera ?

Edit: so the barlow has the T ring adapter built in?

Edited June 27, 2020 by Blackware

[happy-kat]

The heritage 130p will reach focus but you will need to drop the trusses about 1 inch. You do not need a barlow with this particular flavour of 130p.

Personally I prefer a t ring used with a t mount as this suits the focuser as you can manually manipulate the depth the camera is into the focuser as you play with identifying where focus is to fine tune the truss height as ideally you want the camera fairly well in the focoser.

The OTA will need to be moved deeper into the mount so as to then balance with the camera. I don't know what your camera weighs but when I tried it the canon 1100d at 495 grams was coped with but it's subject to potential slight droopping on the focuser arm so collimation may not stay absolutely perfect.

The Moon is great to image and video is good as it's not easy to get perfect image as the Moon dips in and out of great seeing.

With the mount being static your exposures will need to be very short like 1 second and less with means DSO are tough, really bright globular clusters might be worth trying but you really want lots of images to then stack so keeping the target centre to the field of view will be tough.

Imaging something is not impossible but you'll need to be patient and experiment to tease what you can achieve.

[Blackware]

14 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

The heritage 130p will reach focus but you will need to drop the trusses about 1 inch. You do not need a barlow with this particular flavour of 130p.

Personally I prefer a t ring used with a t mount as this suits the focuser as you can manually manipulate the depth the camera is into the focuser as you play with identifying where focus is to fine tune the truss height as ideally you want the camera fairly well in the focoser.

The OTA will need to be moved deeper into the mount so as to then balance with the camera. I don't know what your camera weighs but when I tried it the canon 1100d at 495 grams was coped with but it's subject to potential slight droopping on the focuser arm so collimation may not stay absolutely perfect.

The Moon is great to image and video is good as it's not easy to get perfect image as the Moon dips in and out of great seeing.

With the mount being static your exposures will need to be very short like 1 second and less with means DSO are tough, really bright globular clusters might be worth trying but you really want lots of images to then stack so keeping the target centre to the field of view will be tough.

Imaging something is not impossible but you'll need to be patient and experiment to tease what you can achieve.

Thanks for explaining!

[happy-kat]

Adding a barlow will only make your exposure length potential half as long.

Imaging towards the east or west below 60° gives you the least field rotation so works in your favour using a static mount.

For looking at what one member is doing with a static mount look in this album.

Link here

 

[rnobleeddy]

1 hour ago, Blackware said:

So a Barlow would help focussing, but then a barlow isn't for astrophotography ? Couldn't I just manually focus with the camera ?

Edit: so the barlow has the T ring adapter built in?

Sorry, I wasn't very clear. The barlow magnifies the image (a 2x barlow by 2 times, etc) which has the effect of shifting the focal point such a reflector that can't reach focus, can with the barlow. It's generally suggested for scopes where you can't reach focus, but it looks like yours can, so you won't need one.