Astrophotography setup for $400 USD possible ?

[LeiaOrgana]

So is there any way to do a setup that, assuming you have a Rebel T3(Canon 1100D), can do DSO astrophotography? Guiding is off the table at the budget.

OTA: Refractor (Orion ST80?)

Mount: IDK, but it has be complete with a motor drive for $300 USD if we go with the ST80.

I'm trying to do subs of 30 sec or less, maybe 45 sec to 1 min. 

[vlaiv]

Hi and welcome to SGL.

$400 for AP setup? That is not going to happen.

Even simple star tracker is going to decimate your budget quite quickly:

https://www.ioptron.com/product-p/3322.htm

In fact - if you can, do that - get star tracker, kit lens, and that DSLR that you have and start doing AP with that kit. (Just keep in mind that above star tracker does not include tripod).

If you have any DIY skills - save money for later and start with simple barn door tracker:

https://nightskypix.com/how-to-build-a-barn-door-tracker/

(although - do google search, you'll find many different designs).

If you have access to 3d printer - maybe you can print your EQ mount. That will save you quite a bit of budget. Rest of the budget is best spent on good lens.

https://www.instructables.com/Equatorial-Mount-for-DSLR/

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3327081

Any scope that you might want to use for AP is going to cost at least as whole budget you have now.

Scopes like ST80 - are going to be awful to do AP with - for many reasons. They have strong chromatic aberration as well as often strong spherical aberration. They have field curvature and their focuser will have trouble holding DSLR straight so you'll have tilt as well.

As far as scopes go - you want either something like SkyWatcher 130PDS with coma corrector or small ED doublet with field flattener - either way, it will eat up $400 or a bit more.

If you want to try with ST80 - at least consider upgrading focuser to something better - like GSO crayford for refractors.

And we did not even touch the most important bit - the mount. Mount should really consume most of your budget as it is most important part of AP setup.

Astrophotography is expensive.

[Clarkey]

43 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Astrophotography is expensive.

You forgot "very".😁

[bobro]

If you have basic DIY skills, a 'standard' 130mm reflector on an EQ mount with motor drive will fit your budget and allow your DSLR to image with 30 second subs, perhaps longer occasionally. I started this way for £150, though prices have risen in the last few years. My setup was a Meade 130MD.

I'm not familiar with USD suppliers, but here is one for a Meade 130 for $300 https://www.highpointscientific.com/brands/meade/meade-telescopes/meade-polaris-130-mm-german-equatorial-reflector-telescope-216006 though it may be out of stock. A basic motor drive is another $50. the catch is the metal scope tube needs to be shortened by around 35mm to allow a DSLR to come to focus as the sensor in a DSLR is back from the flange screw connection to the telescope. That pushes the camera focal plane too far out, requiring the camera to be brought nearer to the primary mirror by shortening the tube in some way. A Celestron or similar 130mm scope may be an alternative.

This setup is very basic but can readily capture brighter DSO objects. It may be more appropriate to start out with better equipment, though this costs more. Depends on your resources and intentions.

 

[LeiaOrgana]

My other option is to bite the bullet and get a CG-4 with motor drive. I have a Celestron 102 f6.5. I can't afford guiding. What can I put on there?

Is the 130 a Bird-Jones?

At best, we have around $157 USD after CG-4 and motor drive on the bite the bullet budget. There is no way we can get guiding or a coma corrector for that. 

[vlaiv]

1 minute ago, LeiaOrgana said:

I have a Celestron 102 f6.5.

Is that refractor? If you have that - then use it instead of ST80.

2 minutes ago, LeiaOrgana said:

Is the 130 a Bird-Jones?

130p / 130pds are basic newtonian scopes - with parabolic mirror (thus suffer coma, and spherical mirror at that speed would be very poor performer).

Avoid any Bird Jones designs - you'll recognize those by short tube and very long focal length - while focuser / eyepiece is on the side of the tube - like this:

that scope has 1440mm of FL - no way 1.4m of FL can fit inside such short tube (and it is not Mak or SCT or other variant of Cassegrain - these have eyepiece at the back of the tube).

5 minutes ago, LeiaOrgana said:

At best, we have around $157 USD after CG-4 and motor drive on the bite the bullet budget. There is no way we can get guiding or a coma corrector for that. 

If you have above 102 F/6.5 and you can get CG-4 with motors - use that combination.

You'll need wratten #8 to use with achromat scope to tame chromatic aberration and you'll need to stop down aperture a bit - make it F/8 scope so use say 80mm aperture mask.

In similar combination, I was able to get rather decent images - like this one:

That was done with 4" F/5 refractor (bigger brother of ST80) - but with very light weight camera with small sensor (planetary / guider cam) and stopped down to 66mm and with use of wratten #8 filter.

It was on Heq5 mount without guiding. Can't remember exposure time.

[bobro]

53 minutes ago, LeiaOrgana said:

My other option is to bite the bullet and get a CG-4 with motor drive

Good suggestion as it has the potential for a goto upgrade and can provide decent imaging with a scope that isn't too heavy.

[Elp]

As you already have the dslr, pair it with a decent dslr lens and try the Omegon LX2 tracker, pair it with a cheap EQ wedge. The LX2 is cheap, purely mechanical, small lightweight, and I managed 2 minute subs with a Samyang wide angle lens when I tested it. Should fit into your budget.

As others have said further astro with a telescope involved is more expensive, for a basic but decent setup you'd have to budget £1000-£1500.

[dmki]

The only way you can do this for $400 is if you are repurposing a DSLR and lenses that you already have, so that the only thing you are buying is the mount and tracker.

as soon as you talk telescopes(to use uk second hand pricing) your looking at a motorised mount which is going to cost between £250-700 and 300+ for the telecope

[rickwayne]

Concur with Vlaiv. At that budget, my (free) advice is don't even think about a telescope, put every penny you can scrape into a mount and put a DSLR+lens on it. Even at 50mm, there are excellent targets that will give you plenty of challenges. In the winter, the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex is bright, colorful, and ranges from stuff you can pick out with the naked eye (M42)  to regions that require lots of total exposure time (Barnard's Loop, the Witch Head Nebula). In the summer, there are excellent pickings in the Milky Way, e.g. the Antares/Rho Ophiuchi region. There are also lots of targets in the 100-200mm range, if you don't already have something in that range you can pick up an old manual-everything prime for around a hundred bucks if you look. (Can't use autofocus, prime is better for astro than zoom, camera automation does you no good...heck, a 1970s vintage screw-on Pentax with an adapter would serve you nicely.)

Many people starting out think it's all about the optics. For deep-sky photography, that's really not true unless your goal is tiny galaxies. What's vastly more important is a mount that will track well enough to let you consistently obtain anywhere from 30 to 120 seconds in your exposures. (For tiny galaxies, you need long-focal-length optics AND a good mount.) If the mount wobbles, it doesn't matter how great your optical train is, the pictures will be blurry at best and an utter hash at worst.

You might be able to get a telescope package for that much, even something with a motorized drive. But there is just no way to make a profit selling a sufficiently high-quality mount for deep-sky astro for a couple hundred bucks. Otherwise the market would be full of them. For my work, at a mere 336mm, the mount has to track within a fraction of an arcsecond, so less than 1/3600 of a degree, for the picture to come out.

A quality tracker, DSLR, and decent lens will give you the whole deep-sky experience. There will be a LOT to learn and many challenges along the way, not the least being processing your images.

Edited October 28, 2021 by rickwayne

[Ghostflyer]

For a grab and go I use the ioptron skyguider pro. The internal battery lasts about 20 hours so I so I can do multiple sessions before having to recharge it. I use it with a couple of nikons and some prime lenses that I have. You can check the classifieds here and and the other site and normally find them under $400 is dollars used. The hardest part it's actually locating target With longer focal lengths.

This was about an hour worth of data with a mediocre polar alignment at best best 32nd shots in shots F 2.8 And on top of that I don't have the best processing skills I'm still learning.

Edited October 28, 2021 by Ghostflyer