Still trying to finalize my kit

[Ianw]

I am setting up my first astrophotography set up and still trying to decide on a few things and value your input.

 

MOUNT: Decided

Skywatcher HEQ5

SCOPE: Undecided 

Either Skywatcher 130P-DS or the 150P-DS, I still can not decide between the two is there any benefits/cons to help me decide.

 

Now the other decision is if I should purchase a collimating eye peice and a coma corrector or spend a bit more and get  a guide scope package Guide Scope Pack

 

What do you all think, I am mostly interested in DSO photography with some planetary imaging and probably later solar.

[endless-sky]

More aperture is always nice, but for astrophotography you should really consider focal length, sensor size and the resulting field of view. What objects are you more interested in capturing? Also, shorter focal length is easier to guide, maybe for the HEQ5 the smaller telescope would be better suited.

As for your other question, you'll eventually want both the coma corrector and the guiding setup. 650mm and 750mm are not going to give you very long exposure times, unguided. But without a coma corrector you most likely will not like the shape of the stars. I probably would get the coma corrector first, as you will have a lot of things on your plate to learn, solve, master. And add the autoguiding setup later, when you feel comfortable enough with the other steps of your setup.

Good luck and clear skies!

Edited July 14, 2020 by endlessky

[Ianw]

16 minutes ago, endlessky said:

More aperture is always nice, but for astrophotography you should really consider focal length, sensor size and the resulting field of view. What objects are you more interested in capturing? Also, shorter focal length is easier to guide, maybe for the HEQ5 the smaller telescope would be better suited.

As for your other question, you'll eventually want both the coma corrector and the guiding setup. 650mm and 750mm are not going to give you very long exposure times, unguided. But without a coma corrector you most likely will not like the shape of the stars. I probably would get the coma corrector first, as you will have a lot of things on your plate to learn, solve, master. And add the autoguiding setup later, when you feel comfortable enough with the other steps of your setup.

Good luck and clear skies!

Thanks for the reply I didn’t know if getting the guiding first would make for better pictures of nebula and galaxies initially over the coma corrector, you are right though I have a lot to learn  

[endless-sky]

Well, guiding certainly helps. For comparison, I have been using my NEQ6 Pro mount with the optics I currently have available: a 70-300mm lens (mostly at 300mm) and my Celestron C8 (both at native focal length and with a 0.63x reducer). I don't have an autoguiding setup, yet. But with the 300mm I have been able to take up to 2 minutes exposures without star trails, and that's all I need for a correct exposure, so I don't miss the autoguider, yet. But with the C8, even at 1280mm with the reducer, the highest exposure I can obtain is 30s (1/4 of 2 minutes), and that definitely is not long enough to expose much data. So, in this case, I do miss the autoguider.

But, as I was saying, it also depends on the objects you are most interested in capturing, and for me it is the wide-field, beautiful nebulae. Galaxies and planetary nebulae can wait. So, 300mm is good enough. And the autoguider can wait.

The comment about having a lot to learn was not meant personally to you. It was more of a general statement. I have been interested in Astronomy since my early childhood and the last time I did astrophotography was in 1997, when Hale-Bopp appeared. Back then I had a Celestar C8 and I was using a film camera, piggy backed on top of the C8, which I was using to guide, manually, with an illuminated reticule eye-piece. I considered that hard! I had to stay 10-15 minutes at a time, for every single photo, at the eye-piece, without touching anything, with a motor only in AR and the other hand on the micro-movement knob of DEC. I picked back up astrophotography in January of this year, after I saw some videos of what people are capable of capturing these days with a digital camera, some lenses, a good equatorial mount and digital post-processing. And with exposures lasting a mere 30 seconds or a couple of minutes, max! I was astonished and immediately hooked. Bought a used NEQ6 Pro and started imaging again with my Nikon D90 and a 70-300mm kit lens that I already had for terrestrial photography.

I got to say it is probably harder now, than it was back then. At least, in the beginning. I had to deal with a GO-TO mount, software to control the mount, software to control the camera, all and every thing that can go wrong, with all these things communicating to each other. Learning to use the planetarium to slew the mount, learning to use the software to help me focus, plan the shot, learn plate solving, making all these things work. And then, learning to use the post-processing software, which accounts for 50% or more of the quality of the result. Learning all these things is hard, and with a very steep learning curve. But, man, when you get everything working, it's spectacular. You just sit at your laptop and watch the mount slew to the target. Take a test exposure with the Bahtinov mask, adjust focus till it's perfect. Plate solve and you know exactly where you are in the sky and how the object fits in your frame. Plan the sequence and start seeing the images getting downloaded to your screen. It's simply amazing and priceless and beautiful. I would never go back to how it was in the 90's. Not after I experienced all this.

So, after all this rambling, the main thing I wanted to say was that with all those things to learn, adding an autoguider to the mix is just another layer of complexity, of things that can go wrong, of things to solve. So, that's why I suggested to start simple, which is mainly a reflection of what I have been doing. I have been imaging since January and I am now to a point that I feel comfortable enough with all the rest I mentioned to add an autoguider to the mix. I don't know if I would have been able to handle it from the start or how harder it would have made everything else. But with those short focal lengths, I really didn't need it right from the start, either.

Edited July 14, 2020 by endlessky