entry level for astrophotography. Telescope or Camera & lens?

[chrchll]

Hello i come in peace and need some friendly advice.

i'm looking to get into astrophotography for deep space objects. i currently only have a skywatcher heritage 130p which is fine for planets and the moon. so i'm looking into making a big step up. i've been browsing the forums and there are so many different posts and it gets a bit confusing with all the different mounts, cameras, scopes. for a total beginner can anyone recommend a entry level setup either with scopes or just camera equipment? not sure on budget but it would be £100's rather £1000's.

thanks  in adavnce

 

[ollypenrice]

As everyone will tell you, and with good reason, you first need the best possible mount. If the mount won't track the sky with the necessary precision it doesn't matter what scope or camera you have, your pictures will be blurred. So it's mount first.

Now, what is 'the necessary precision?' This depends on the resolution at which you're going to be imaging. The proper units of resolution are arcseconds per pixel (how many arcseconds of sky land on one pixel). The more sky per pixel, the lower the resolution. For a given camera the resolution is controlled only by the focal length since the pixel size is now fixed. You can image at short focal length with only a modest tracking accuracy. As your focal length increases so does your need for accuracy. Not all that far along the path from low to high resolution you need a good mount and and autoguider for it. So the message is clear: on a budget keep to a short focal length, perhaps with a prime lens like a Samyang 85 or 130. (The 130 has a devout following and its own thread on here.)

If you stick with lens imaging you might be happy with a Skywatcher Star Adventurer. Personally I would make the HEQ5 the next step up. I can't see the point in an intermediate step which would soon leave you frustrated.

I would also make this my first purchase: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/books/making-every-photon-count-steve-richards.html  (When I started, Steve hadn't written it. It would have saved me a lot of money had it been available...)

Olly