Star Adventurer 2?

[RemcoDutch]

Hey guys, 

Driving to Tenerife this monday! Going to visit the local Astronomy shop there and planning to buy the SWSA2.
 

My current camera is Canon 2000D (Rebel T7 I believe in US?) with a 18-200 f5.6 Tamron + 75-300 EF F5.6 Canon lens.
Will I be able to track accuratly for 1-2 min exposures on the SWSA2? Or would I be better of buying something else ? 

Suggestions please below 500 euro if possible
If not I might have to rethink my strategy

Thanks alot in advance!

[Gfamily]

A friend managed 10 min unguided exposures with a 400mm scope and dSLR combo using the original SA. 

He was very good at polar alignment - but 2 min exposures should be feasible with your set-up.  

[Adam J]

3 hours ago, RemcoDutch said:

Hey guys, 

Driving to Tenerife this monday! Going to visit the local Astronomy shop there and planning to buy the SWSA2.
 

My current camera is Canon 2000D (Rebel T7 I believe in US?) with a 18-200 f5.6 Tamron + 75-300 EF F5.6 Canon lens.
Will I be able to track accuratly for 1-2 min exposures on the SWSA2? Or would I be better of buying something else ? 

Suggestions please below 500 euro if possible
If not I might have to rethink my strategy

Thanks alot in advance!

Get an AZ GTI much better in the long run due to plate solving / goto and it guides just as well in RA as the SA. 

Adam 

[Clarkey]

6 hours ago, Adam J said:

Get an AZ GTI much better in the long run due to plate solving / goto

Would you not want an equatorial mount for AP?

[wongataa]

7 hours ago, Clarkey said:

Would you not want an equatorial mount for AP?

You can put the AZ GTI on a wedge and run it in equatorial mode (with the right firmware)

[wongataa]

19 hours ago, RemcoDutch said:

Hey guys, 

Driving to Tenerife this monday! Going to visit the local Astronomy shop there and planning to buy the SWSA2.
 

My current camera is Canon 2000D (Rebel T7 I believe in US?) with a 18-200 f5.6 Tamron + 75-300 EF F5.6 Canon lens.
Will I be able to track accuratly for 1-2 min exposures on the SWSA2? Or would I be better of buying something else ? 

Suggestions please below 500 euro if possible
If not I might have to rethink my strategy

Thanks alot in advance!

With a guide scope and guiding software then yes you definitely can.  Without guiding you may well not get every frame without trails.  With mine I had at least 50% of frames with some trailing using a 200mm lens and 90 second exposures.  You could get a better copy so can track better.

[Richard_]

Using the SA2i with my Canon 600D and Redcat51 (250mm focal length) I was able to perform 60s subs quite comfortably without a guider. However, I got the same experience as @wongataa so about 40-50% of subs had some minor star trails likely caused by the inaccuracy of the gearing in the mount, so I just discard them when stacking. 

Once I added an auto guider I could take  300s subs without seeing any star trailing, with the only oblong stars caused by wind etc. I never tried above 300s so cannot comment beyond that. So perhaps you should consider a way of autoguiding in your budget if you don't want to lose half a night of imaging? 

I've provided example images of my setup and final images to help illustrated my "triggers broom" of a mount 😁

Here are some of my first astro images using the unguided setup at 60s (please ignore the quality of my early processing skills!). 

Here's a picture of the above setup but with autoguider and ASI Air Pro. I got 120s subs easily with this setup. 

At this point, I upgraded to the ASI533 camera. Here's an example of a final image with 300s guided subs  (ignore size of stars, this was way too high of an exposure time, I just wanted to see how well it tracked!). Note: I only discarded 1 sub out of 31 due to cloud cover rather than elongated stars. 

[RemcoDutch]

On 09/01/2022 at 13:07, Richard_ said:

Using the SA2i with my Canon 600D and Redcat51 (250mm focal length) I was able to perform 60s subs quite comfortably without a guider. However, I got the same experience as @wongataa so about 40-50% of subs had some minor star trails likely caused by the inaccuracy of the gearing in the mount, so I just discard them when stacking. 

Once I added an auto guider I could take  300s subs without seeing any star trailing, with the only oblong stars caused by wind etc. I never tried above 300s so cannot comment beyond that. So perhaps you should consider a way of autoguiding in your budget if you don't want to lose half a night of imaging? 

I've provided example images of my setup and final images to help illustrated my "triggers broom" of a mount 😁

Here are some of my first astro images using the unguided setup at 60s (please ignore the quality of my early processing skills!). 

Here's a picture of the above setup but with autoguider and ASI Air Pro. I got 120s subs easily with this setup. 

At this point, I upgraded to the ASI533 camera. Here's an example of a final image with 300s guided subs  (ignore size of stars, this was way too high of an exposure time, I just wanted to see how well it tracked!). Note: I only discarded 1 sub out of 31 due to cloud cover rather than elongated stars. 

Thanks so much for the post! 
Think I will pick up the SA begin of feb (when they come back in stock).

[Swillis]

With a good polar alignment you should hopefully be able to get 1-2min exposures but it will also depend on the focal length your planning to use. 

I have the 2i but have only gone up to 30sec exposures using 160mm focal length since I don't have a view of Polaris. 

If that's the same 75-300 lens I have then I would recommend taping down the zoom ring as it has a habit of slipping.

[BCN_Sean]

I've never managed more than 90 seconds at 200mm with a satisfactory level of keepers with good polar alignment unguided.  Guided on the other hand, it'll sit all night at 300mm on 120 second subs and have a keep rate above 90%; never tried anything above 120 though.  All my stuff is with prime lenses and a full frame camera hanging off the back, so a weight on the dec of about 3.5kg.  Out of the box, it does need a bit of a tune, things like the backlash adjuster, maybe a clean and re-grease of the hub and also some noodling with the wedge; but all in, it's not a bad little mount to work with. 

However, the big elephant in the room is dec movement, or the lack of it... If you're wanting full guiding, or needing dithering look at the AZ-GTI instead.