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Gift beginner astrophotography telescope


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Hello!

 

My husband has been doing some astrophotograpy with a simple motor driven EQ mount and his DSLR for a few years now. I would like to get him a telescope for Christmas. However, like most of the world, we are having supply chain issues and the available equipment in our country is a bit limited.  One of the available telescopes is a Celestron Astromaster 130EQ motor driven.  Is this a decent starter telescope for astrophography? Something that you can get nice pictures of the moon and planets and maybe some of the larger galaxies and nebula before upgrading in a year or so when hopefully better equipment is available? Do people have other recommendations? Budget is flexible. 

 

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It is very basic, and not really suited to Astrophotography at all.  You might just get away with doing planets, but not deep sky imaging.

Unfortunately Astrophotography is an expensive hobby.  

You don't say where you are in the world. 

Carole 

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We are up in the north of Norway. I have sort of resigned myself that getting equipment suitable for proper deep sky imaging is just not going to be possible this year. However, I wondered if there might be some cheaper options that are useful for learning and getting a few nice photos until better options become available.

Edited by nordlys
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As Peter says, the sponsor of this forum has 4 x EQ5's in stock but these are the basic version without motors. They also have 8x EQ5 Pro mounts in stock, which have motors on both axis and Go-To handset for locating and following targets. These are much better for astrophotography, if the extra cost is acceptable. ;) 

These are nice mounts and I started astrophotography with the EQ5 Pro. 

I don't know what the extra cost would be to import one of these from the UK to Norway but FLO do deliver to Norway and here are the links: 

EQ5 - https://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-mounts/skywatcher-eq5-deluxe.html

EQ5 Pro - https://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-mounts/skywatcher-eq5-pro-synscan-goto.html 

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16 minutes ago, PeterCPC said:

FLO has 4 in stock.

 

7 minutes ago, Budgie1 said:

As Peter says, the sponsor of this forum has 4 x EQ5's in stock but these are the basic version without motors. They also have 8x EQ5 Pro mounts in stock, which have motors on both axis and Go-To handset for locating and following targets. These are much better for astrophotography, if the extra cost is acceptable. ;) 

These are nice mounts and I started astrophotography with the EQ5 Pro. 

I don't know what the extra cost would be to import one of these from the UK to Norway but FLO do deliver to Norway and here are the links: 

EQ5 - https://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-mounts/skywatcher-eq5-deluxe.html

EQ5 Pro - https://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-mounts/skywatcher-eq5-pro-synscan-goto.html 

I normally balk at importing anything expensive into Norway given the heavy import fees, but surprisingly, that's actually not going to be much more expensive then buying it domestically.  That doesn't happen often.  

Does the GoTo require any sort of connectivity? We often don't have any mobile coverage

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19 minutes ago, nordlys said:

 

I normally balk at importing anything expensive into Norway given the heavy import fees, but surprisingly, that's actually not going to be much more expensive then buying it domestically.  That doesn't happen often.  

Does the GoTo require any sort of connectivity? We often don't have any mobile coverage

No GOTO works with software in the handset. You just have to set the time and co-ordinates up.

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I got into Astrophotography with a StarTravel 120T - so you can do some imaging with it. It is not the best suited for the task - it's an Achromatic refractor, which means that red, green and blue will not all be in focus at the same point, which leads to some tinging and chromatic aberration. I started doing quite a bit of mono imaging and narrowband imaging to get results out of it.

If you want a scope at around that budget then a reflector like this one isn't a bad thing to get started with (with the appropriate T-Ring / Camera adapter etc...)

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/reflectors/skywatcher-explorer-130p-ds-ota.html

This thread, mentioned on the FLO site, is specifically images achieved with the 130PDS: 

 

Edited by gilesco
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