taking pictures

[Joel]

hey all just some advice really,

i want to have a setup where i can take pictures of what im seeing and was talking to a friend of mine and he said there were already packages with a scope and camera available, whats a reasonable price for a package like this and where should i be looking for them.

hope you can help

joel:headbang:

[philsail1]

Hello Joel - and welcome to Stargazers Lounge Astronomical Forum!

If you are talking about Astrophotography, well it is a huge subject in itself, with several different ways of taking photos (or images) of astro subjects. There are also many, many different types of cameras and imaging devices you can buy.

Whilst I don't know of any actual telescope and camera "packages" as such, one of the simplest ways of starting out is to take "afocal" photos of planets and some deep sky objects. This method simploy means that you attach a simple digicamera (via a suitable bracket) to the telescope eyepiece and take photos. You can take reasonably good photos of the Moon and Planets with this method.

You can buy the bracket for about £30.

If you have not yet bought yourself a telescope - well that's another huge subject in itself!

Perhaps a good scope to start with might be a Skywatcher 130PM which is a motor driven 5 and a half inch reflector. (Whatever scope you buy, you will need a motor driven mount to enable your scope (and attached camera) to "track" whatever you are photographing.

That.s about all I can say on the subject, but I'm sure others will soon come along to give you more advice.

Best wishes,

philsail1

[ollypenrice]

Hi there,

There are several ways to take astro pictures. You can use any digital camera, whether compact as outlined by Philsail above or DSLR suitably attached to your scope (which will have to be on a motorized mount) and with this you can take a few bright objects. (The moon and planets.)

Or you can take the same bright things with a modifed webcam. Surprizingly these give stunning results but only with some fancy (but free) software.

And then there's deep sky. Now it gets tough. In theory any motorized equatorial mount will allow you to track the sky to take the long exposures necessary. Manufacturers of inexpensive kit like to give you the impression that this kit will work for photography. Unless it is very good, it won't. Mounts capable of tracking accurately for five minute exposures start with the Skywatcher EQ5 and they need an autoguider (a parallel telescope and camera) to do so. The autoguider notes the tracking errors and sends corrections to the mount.

You need to do a fair bit of reading up before spending any money and going to an astronomical society to meet the 'hands on' brigade would be a great start.

The pictures you see on this forum are not taken easily!!

A cheap complete 'deep sky' imaging setup is 'cheap' as in £2000...

Olly

[Joel]

cheers for the advice guys,

I gotta be honest and im thinking of running before im barely walking. i got a telescope a couple of weeks ago and been really hooked, so naturally i want to own and know EVERYTHING. so i have ordered a copy of left turn at orion and think im gonna start learning about the things i am looking at first.

did feel a bit chuffed last night, i finished work and was walking to the car and could show everyone where saturn was might sound daft but i still got the smile there now

[Psychobilly]

Hi Tom welcome to SGL What scope did you get....

Steves excellent book "Making Every Photon Count" is an excellent and easy read and will be money well spent as it will give you some idea whats involved for deep sky astro photography...and let you decide if this is the sort of thing you want to do...

Peter...