Seeking equipment list for astrophotography

[DanaS]

Hi,

I recently reunited with my high school sweetheart. He loves of astronomy (as do I), and would like to get into astrophotography. He's smart and capable. We both have modest budgets as we work in the arts and each have kids to raise. I'd like to invest in something for him to get him started, for the holidays.

What's the best way to start?  I'm in the $500-$600 range for a gift for him. He has a low-end telescope and has been using his samsung phone for low-light shots. Obviously those aren't adequate. I'd like to surprise him with SOMETHING that would help to give him a boost towards some proper astrophotography. I realize that in total it really requires a full budget of 10x what I'm looking at right now.... still, I thought I'd see if anyone had any advice for me for a starter that was an investment item.

Thanks,

Dana

[Elp]

For that budget a ZWO Seestar no contest.

[Elp]

You need to decide what is going to be imaged. Solar system objects, deep sky are two different things which require two different setups normally. The above is an excellent point of entry for deep sky and is incredibly easy to use.

A basic AP rig for deep sky will cost approximately 1500-2000 if most of it is bought used. New, add on at bare minimum 50 percent onto the top end. This is for a small rig.

It is possible doing wide field sky imaging with a basic camera and fixed tripod, people do it with mobile phones these days. If you want more deep sky target details that's when it starts to get expensive very quickly.

 

Edited November 17, 2023 by Elp

[DanaS]

I know he is very interested in planetary and deep sky photography. The ZWO Seestar looks pretty great!! Could I beg you to tell me what might be the next level up, in your experience and opinion?

 

Thank you so much for the help. This very novice star-gazer appreciates your kindness.

Dana

Edited November 17, 2023 by DanaS

[DanaS]

One more question, with the ZWO Seestar, do you feel the apertura portable telescope battery - 155wh lithium ion battery - for $199 extra is worth it?  

[happy-kat]

What is the telescope and tripod you currently have?

[Elp]

As the Seeatar is effectively a condensed AP setup (all in one), what you'd need as the next step in line with the topic of this thread:

1. A sturdy tripod, this is the most important thing even if you plan on doing visual, together with...

2. The mount, I list these separately because a good mount head on top of a poor tripod is a recipe for disappointment. The mount is what you clamp the optics on top of. There's in a nutshell two types, altitude-azimith (alt-az) which you move in altitude (up/down) and azimuth (left/right) and provides the most basic of movement, you can image planets with such a setup but will have to keep moving the scope to keep the planet in view (you'll be surprised how quickly the earth rotates). The next which is required for deep sky (the Seestar is altaz so can only take I think 10s images but it continues to take them and combines them (stacking) to reveal more detail the more time you spend on a target), is equatorial, you align the mount/scope to Polaris (northern hemisphere) or to a point nearby the Southern Cross (southern hemisphere) and then you can move the mount in Right Ascension (RA) so it rotates around the "Pole Star" you aligned to and Declination (kind of left right), an equatorial mount is what you really need to image deep sky, one with motorised tracking in RA bare minimum. Good EQ mounts will have motors and internal computer data to control the RA and DEC movement and can also Goto, once aligned move your optics to point to a target within its computer system/catalogue. You can also get goto altaz mounts.

The price of a mount varies massively depending on what you plan to load it with. The most basic mount you can have for AP is a DIY barn door tracker which can be self made, the idea is to counteract the rotation of the earth to keep a target fairly central and you can mount a camera onto such a tracker. Motorised RA Star Trackers would be the next step for mounting cameras onto. Then you get into the 500-1000 price range for ones which can goto and have small refractor telescopes mounted onto them. Mounts can run into five figure price ranges (maybe higher) as payloads, mechanics, quality goes up. As a basic guide an HEQ5 or 6 class mount is usually a keeper mount for life, for a starter camera or small scope setup something like the Skywatcher Star Adventurer GTI (not to be confused with the Star Adventurer "star tracker" which existed beforehand for camera type setups).

3. The optics. This is broad. It depends what you want to image. For deep sky you can do widefield with a 12mm or so camera lens, 100mm starts to narrow into specific targets but likely you'd need tracking at this point, up to around 500mm gets a lot of targets then you need to go to around 1000mm focal length for smaller targets (the majority of galaxies for example are tiny other than half a dozen or so). Over 1000mm brings planets into view but the only ones of significant detail are Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. With added lenses/focal extenders (Barlow) you can increase your focal length to over 3000mm to get larger planet views if the base scope optics as well as your atmospheric seeing support such magnification. A decent scope can likely be bought for around 500 new, some also come supplied with a mount and tripod but not usually the best but for a guide look at this forums sponsor First Light Optics and they have a beginner's scope page. As you go larger in size (aperture and focal length), this starts to complicate things as you need beefier (ie larger, heavier and more expensive) tripods, mounts and will definitely need computer control to manage the whole thing. Telescopes generally come in these categories: lens type - refractor and mirror type - Newtonian/dobsonian (a newt on a dob mount), maksutov, Schmidt cassegrain, Ritchey Chretien.

4. Camera. The most basic, well you can use a compact camera, I've done it, even on a fixed photo tripod. DSLRs are popular, you may already have one. For serious AP a lot of people invest in dedicated astro cameras or stick to their dslr type cameras, with the latter many get them astro modified to make them pick up hydrogen alpha emission signal better. Many popular brands of astro cameras if you look at FLOs astrophotography page listing. If you want to do long exposure AP you'll also need a guide camera and guidescope which you attach on top of your scope and with the computer controller it watches the stars and tells the mount to move when it detects the stars have moved to keep the target in centre (autoguiding).

5. Computer controller. Either use an existing computer you may have and load it with free software like APT or NINA or buy an on scope solution like a mini PC, ZWO Asiair, a raspberry pi loaded with Astroberry or Stellarmate. With all the electronics (goto mount, camera, guide camera, power, there are additional automation pieces you can add like an auto focuser, filter wheel amount others) you need computer software to manage it all and continue capturing images whilst the operator leaves it to run.

6. Ancillaries. You need to have a budget separate for things like hardware (dovetail bars, fixings), cables, dew heaters, all sorts. I'd anticipate at least 10 percent of your total budget.

This in a nutshell would be the next step. If you look at Altair Astros website they do packages (the last time I looked) which will give you an idea of what a setup would look like, also look at Trevor Jones "Astrobackyard" videos on YouTube (they're generally the most accessible, well explained and to the point I've seen), many other good YouTubers too.

One important point to note. The images you see on websites, even NASA's have been post processed using computer software, I'd estimate around 70pc effort maybe more in presenting a "nice" image comes from this. You can have the best image data in the world with the best optics but without these software skills that data won't look like anything amazing. You can however have relatively average data and good skills and make something presentable.

[Elp]

1 hour ago, DanaS said:

One more question, with the ZWO Seestar, do you feel the apertura portable telescope battery - 155wh lithium ion battery - for $199 extra is worth it?  

Definitely not. I believe it can be usb power bank charged which don't cost much at all. If you have any more Seestar queries I suggest you ask on the Seestar forum thread (there's two popular ones on here).

[M40]

Hello DanaS and welcome to the site 

+1 for the seestar, its a phenomenal piece of kit. As Elp said, don't worry about an additional power pack and have a look around the site at what the seestar has achieved both with very simple phone images and others with very light processing. Please note that the seestar is very good on deep sky, the sun and the moon but is not for planets.

Also have a look on YouTube for cuiv the lazy geek and some of his videos on the seestar, if his enthusiasm doesn't sell it, nothing will 🤣

All the best.

[happy-kat]

EEA electronically enhanced astronomy is interesting I find as it reveals what the telescope is seeing by live stacking short length exposures of deep space objects from an astro camera, depending on what you have already there might be mileage in getting an Astro camera. Planets are taken generally by taking video of lots of frames a second as that's often done and using software to make a planet image from the best frames when the seeing/atmosphere was better. It's possible to choose an Astro camera that covers both. Though it could be connected to a PC depending on camera it could also connect to a mobile phone or tablet.

Just a different thought 

[Cosmic Geoff]

2 hours ago, DanaS said:

The ZWO Seestar looks pretty great!! Could I beg you to tell me what might be the next level up, in your experience and opinion?

If you want to have a rig that clearly outperforms the Seestar, be prepared to spend a lot more money.  Like several times more.

2 hours ago, DanaS said:

One more question, with the ZWO Seestar, do you feel the apertura portable telescope battery - 155wh lithium ion battery - for $199 extra is worth it?  

No. The Seestar battery lasts for several hours.  I have found that my iphone needs a recharge before the Serestar does.

[bwj]

Look up https://sarahmaths.com/

She has videos on her you tube channel that sound like exactly what you might be after. She explains basic and more advanced equipment in different videos, and shows the process all the way through to the finished image. Very clear explanations. 

Clear Skies!

Edited November 18, 2023 by bwj
spelling

[DanaS]

@happy-kat The telescope he has is a Celestron https://www.celestron.com/products/travel-scope-70-dx-portable-telescope-with-smartphone-adapter ... very simple and basic.

 

[happy-kat]

The travelscope 70 refractor would give nice wide field views and can be used for other uses if the hobby grew like a finder scope on a bigger scope or a guiding scope with a bigger setup for imaging or as the telescope if beginning imaging when starting out using what you have already. it'll show chromatic aberration on very bright stars, the Moon and perhaps planets, it'll give nice low powered viewes and sweeping star fields like target like m45 or m44 for example.