starting out

[madbob28]

Just starting to look at astrophotography and i could do wth some advice.

I am thinking of a Skywatcher explorer 13 ps az gti, skywatcher wedge, Altair GPCAM2 290C Colour cam. Would that make a good portable starter setup?

I am mainly looking into DSO, but would like to take the odd planet as well.

Do i need a guide camera as well? how long exposures could i take without one? What approx time are people using for orion nebula (just for example)

Now onto filters, i'm based in Scotland and I have been informed that due to the lighter than normal nights (being so far north the sky never gets completely dark summer time) I should use a Ha filter amoung others - to help block unwanted light, would a Altair tri band filter be a good choice?
On a simular note would that filter be good at stopping light pollution?

Sorry for so many questions, it just seems confusing and ii dont want to make expensive mistakes.

Edited June 28, 2022 by madbob28

[happy-kat]

Hi

This thread you might like to see is all about the az-gti

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/387014-skywatcher-az-gti-mount-owners-thread/

How portable would you want to be, move everything in one go or take apart and move it.

EDIT: original text removed. my error I forgot the bundle is the 130 ps and not pds, different arrangement and accessories on the pds variant to allow focus with a camera out of the box.

Edited June 28, 2022 by happy-kat

[AstroMuni]

6 hours ago, madbob28 said:

Just starting to look at astrophotography and i could do wth some advice.

I am thinking of a Skywatcher explorer 13 ps az gti, skywatcher wedge, Altair GPCAM2 290C Colour cam. Would that make a good portable starter setup?

I am mainly looking into DSO, but would like to take the odd planet as well.

Do i need a guide camera as well? how long exposures could i take without one? What approx time are people using for orion nebula (just for example)

Now onto filters, i'm based in Scotland and I have been informed that due to the lighter than normal nights (being so far north the sky never gets completely dark summer time) I should use a Ha filter amoung others - to help block unwanted light, would a Altair tri band filter be a good choice?
On a simular note would that filter be good at stopping light pollution?

Sorry for so many questions, it just seems confusing and ii dont want to make expensive mistakes.

As already mentioned above, this setup may not be very portable but would be a good place to start. I have a similar setup and you can see my experience in the link in my signature. BTW, I dont have a permanent setup hence I carry and assemble & disassemble the kit every night. (when its cloudless and thats not easy in this country)

No you dont need a guidescope, camera if you are taking short exposures. You should be able to get 30 seconds quite easily with that setup and the images you get are quite good.

Regarding filters to block unwanted light - the Ha filter just allows Ha in and thats a very narrow part of the spectrum. So its only suitable for certain objects like nebulae. You could look at other light pollution filters but those are targeted for street lights etc.and not sunlight. In a nutshell, these dont help much in summer 🙂

Good luck.

Edited June 28, 2022 by AstroMuni

[alacant]

7 hours ago, madbob28 said:

dont want to make expensive mistakes

Hi and welcome

By far the best way to get started is to go along to an astronomy club meeting and see your proposed equipment setup and working. Between them, the members will be able to put together anything you had in mind, and more. Only when you've seen it can you really decide. 

Cheers and HTH

[AstroMuni]

57 minutes ago, alacant said:

Hi and welcome

By far the best way to get started is to go along to an astronomy club meeting and see your proposed equipment setup and working. Between them, the members will be able to put together anything you had in mind, and more. Only when you've seen it can you really decide. 

Cheers and HTH

You are beginning to sound like me 😉

[Elp]

The azgti is a very capable mount, people have managed with the skywatcher wedge but as a beginner I'd buy the William optics one from the off trust me on this. Although they package the 130ps with the azgti I'd err on caution with this, I have a 130pds and due to the size of the scope it introduces a wider centre of gravity so is more prone to wobble, worse so if there's a slight breeze as it's like a wind sail. Unless you have a very sturdy tripod it won't bode well, and I would look into the tripod as your main investment piece (even though it may seem the most boring part).

Planetary imaging is generally straight forward as long as you can focus well and have a fast FPS camera. DSO is another kettle of fish, most nebulae typically you have to expose for at a very minimum if you have fast optics and the object is bright 30s, typically I would do anywhere from 60s to 180s and you'll need autoguiding for this. If you're bang on polar alignment and you're not shooting at the celestial equator you might just manage 30s unguided with a widefield lens, with a telescope it will be difficult with the azgti. Orion is a very bright nebula and not one to really base any figures on as you can capture it with something like 5s exposures, it's neighbor the horse head however you'd struggle to see anything in one photo in anything less than 120s from my experience (average speed optics f6 or so).

If you're starting out I wouldn't worry about filters just yet, you need to assess your shooting environment, where are the immediate lights, where are the surrounding town lights, what sort of lights are they (led light will not be blocked by any filter). Most of the work with AP comes from good post processing and planning your shoots around the environment to get the best shots you can.

[rickwayne]

The classic answer for DSO startup is "buy the biggest, best equatorial mount you can afford and carry". Everything else depends on the mount, it is (literally) foundational. People can and do it other ways, but the learning curve for deep sky is steep and the fewer hypotheses you have to generate for a given problem, the easier it will be to solve. It's not like visual observing. At all. Lots of sub-exposures adding up to long total integration times can address many problems for which you'd think you need aperture -- or even focal length! But if the mount wobbles, you won't like the results.

This is why the other classic answer is "start with a small refractor that won't overload your mount". 

Just sayin'. The Skywatchers have their fervent fans, more power to 'em.

The very best investment you can make is a good basic book like Brackens's The Deep Sky Imaging Primer or Richards's Making Every Photon Count. If you understand the basics underpinning the process, assertions like mine above will seem less like opaque proclamations and more like "Well of course, I could have told you that".

When considering scopes and cameras, the thing to consider is the "image scale", the number of arcseconds spanned by each pixel. Without getting into the weeds (that's what the books are for!), you want that in the neighborhood of 1.5"-2". Ish. There is a great set of calculators on astronomy.tools where you can plug in scopes and cams to your heart's content.

Filters: H-Alpha imaging is explained well above, it's a bit of specialist kit but not essentially more difficult, other than it requires longer exposure times -- I was using five minutes last night and it wouldn't have hurt to go longer.

Guiding: If you get into this you'll want to, but I advise just noodling around a bit first. All guiding gives you is longer sub-exposure times with fewer subs thrown out. Neither of those is make-or-break.

Welcome!

[Elp]

Utilising a camera on a star tracker is usually the best way to start (or even do without the star tracker to start with just to get used to framing, focusing and taking images), the short focal length is quite forgiving. It doesn't have to be a DSLR either, an astro cam with a good dslr lens will do though you'll then need a computer to manage the image acquisition, an Asiair is an excellent piece of kit to start with too (more so if you want to autoguide, plate solve and goto) as it replaces the need for a computer to act as the manager.

Edited June 28, 2022 by Elp