New astrophotography setup

[GeoffM54]

I am looking at buying a new telescope and mount to start attempting some serious astrophotography. I have a budget of £1500 max.  Do I go for a quality Refractor or Cat, bearing in mind I may want to do some visual observing as well. 

My two shortlisted setups are a Skywatcher 80DS Pro refractor and celestron advanced VX eq mount, or Celestron Nexstar Evolution 6 with Wedge. I already have a modded DSLR, and guidescop/cam, and planetary camera.

[Icesheet]

If you’re primarily going for astrophotography it has to be the refractor, no contest for me. 

[Lee_P]

That's a tough one. I guess you're looking at something like this 80ED and HEQ5 bundle, although that's already over budget. There are lots of upgrades worth considering budgeting for too. If I were in your position I'd be keeping a close eye on the buy/sell section of the forum, and try to snap up a second-hand bargain.

 

 

[Clarkey]

As Lee_P says, the HEQ5 ED80 combination (which is what I started with) is already over budget - but is a very good set up for starting out. The ED80's regularly come up second hand as do HEQ5 mounts. In fact there are a number of small refractors on astro buy and sell now that would be good options and similar to the ED80.

[GeoffM54]

11 hours ago, Lee_P said:

That's a tough one. I guess you're looking at something like this 80ED and HEQ5 bundle, although that's already over budget. There are lots of upgrades worth considering budgeting for too. If I were in your position I'd be keeping a close eye on the buy/sell section of the forum, and try to snap up a second-hand bargain.

 

 

Hadn't considered that combo, but it is another for the shortlist I think.  Thanks Lee_P.

[malc-c]

From a remote control support point of view Skywatcher Mounts have more options, being supported by EQMOD/EQASCOM and GSServer on PC's (other hardware is available).  PC control of Celestron mounts is doable, but Skywatcher seem to have cornered the market.

[ollypenrice]

If this is for deep sky, NOT the Cat and NOT the wedge, whatever you do!  Both are bad news for deep sky imaging.

HEQ5, autoguided and either small refractor or small Newt. 

Olly

[vlaiv]

150PDS + coma corrector, HEQ5

Add AZ mount for visual. Visual is pain on EQ mount with newtonian - AZ is better option.

Above will actually overshoot your budget by small margin, so maybe second hand HEQ5, or alternatively - EQ5 (but that depends if you value imaging more or less than visual).

There are few more combinations like getting AZ-EQ5 for example as single mount and using that in EQ mode for AP and AZ mode for visual (if you want goto for visual).

 

[malc-c]

Not going to advise on specific kit for budget, but just repeat the information that is often given for anyone getting into imaging.

Imaging is primary about the mount.  It's no good having superb optics if the mount is subject to wobble and not stable.  Ideally it also needs a fair amount of precision, and for these two reasons mounts such as the HEQ5, and EQ6 form the entry point when it comes to mounts.  Yes you can use EQ3 / EQ5 and may people have done, but having used an EQ5 and then got into imaging I soon needed to replace the EQ5 with a second hand HEQ5 for us with my 200P.   The HEQ5 / EQ6 mounts have a very capable payload which makes it more suitable for a wide range of telescopes, plus the weight of guide scopes and cameras.

The advice continued with the scope.  What subjects interest you.  Wide field, planetary, or deep sky?  There are overlaps and you can use most scopes to cover most things, but you won't get the results.   Turn an f5 200mm newt on Jupiter and you'll get a small disk in the image, use a 200mm f10  cat and you'll see a lot of detail.  But to use the cat for DSO adapters have to be used and it won't perform as well as the newt.  You will get better results when you use an appropriate scope for the targets you want to photograph.  Long focal lengths and large apertures are ideal for planetary, short focal lengths and large apertures for DSOs are the norm.  Turning this example around, I used  the 200p with two 2x barlow lenses and a webcam to image Jupiter a good few years back.  It was messy, grainy after processing, but it gave me a fairly decent image of the belts and spot, al be it dark and lacking a lot of contrast.    Granted camera choice may have improved things, and using a dedicated astro camera might have improved things.

I agree with Vlaiv, a newt is not ideal for visual, but with the use of tube rings it is not that big a problem.  You can make a ring to prevent the tube dropping for around £10 form a band clamp, felt, and the capping from plastic trunking.  But again, are you buying this rig for visual or imaging.

 

[GeoffM54]

Well, certainly a lot of things to think about now.  Probably more confused now then when I started. I'll need to have good think about this.  Thanks for all the input.

[GeoffM54]

On 28/09/2021 at 21:51, Lee_P said:

That's a tough one. I guess you're looking at something like this 80ED and HEQ5 bundle, although that's already over budget. There are lots of upgrades worth considering budgeting for too. If I were in your position I'd be keeping a close eye on the buy/sell section of the forum, and try to snap up a second-hand bargain.

 

 

Hadn't considered that combo, but it is another for the shortlist I think.  Thanks Lee_P.

 

Right, decision made, two setups are what I'm going for, I've got a bargain on a celestron evolution 6 sct, which I'm going to use for visual, and a skywatcher star adventurer 2i pro with a William Optics Zenithstar 61 II APO and guider, and I can use my DSLR for widefield stuff on it too. 

[rickwayne]

For folks in your position, I frequently suggest that they put the scope on hold for now and put that money into an upgraded mount. 200-300mm manual-everything lenses for DSLRs are a relative bargain, you can Google around for astro performance of specific lenses. That gets you plenty of good deep-sky targets, and lets you bring up your game with polar alignment, focusing, pointing, guiding, and very importantly processing. By the time you've got those skills honed to the point where the focal length of the lens is a limitation for you, you'll have saved enough for a telescope, and will have a great mount to put it on. An entry-level DLSR/lens setup on a good mount is a joy to use. The converse...not so much.

[Dazzyt66]

+1 for the dslr and lenses on the HEQ5 which is what I’m using now and having a great experience with minimal faff 😊

[Clarkey]

2 hours ago, rickwayne said:

An entry-level DLSR/lens setup on a good mount is a joy to use. The converse...not so much.

An excellent piece of advice. I went down the HEQ5 and ED80 route (which has been good), but actually I now really want to get a wide field lens.

[rickwayne]

$120 50mm  macro lens on $2600 mount.

 

[GeoffM54]

I will let you know how I get on once I've got everything and tried it out.

 

Geoff.

[GeoffM54]

So,  what I finally ended up with is a Celestron evolution mount with StellaLyra 8" cassegrain scope for visual, and skywatcher adventurer 2i pro to use with my dslr, and a 70mmED SVBONY. Need to get a camera for this but that will have to wait for the moment as I overspent a bit on the other stuff. I have got an SVBONY SV205 planetary camera to use for now.

[ollypenrice]

Do you aim to use the 70mm scope on the Adventurer mount? If so I think you'll find the focal length excessive since 420mm really requires motorized drives in RA and Dec and, at some stage, autogudiding.

Olly