Hello Everybody!

[Staki and Mraki]

Hey guys, my wife and I are interested in exploring the deep dark sky, we are complete newbies to this so any tips/pointers would be appreciated!

We are looking to buy the Skywatcher 150/750 Dobsion as our first telescope, we were thinking of getting a 2x barlow lens to go with it. Do you guys think this is a good choice for beginners? We are most interested in observing the deep sky objects and planets, we researched a little bit on the web and saw that people are singing praises for this telescope and it is within our budget!

If anybody has any suggestions please let us know! 

We are also looking into buying a DSLR camera for other reasons and are wondering if it will be able to pick up the images from the telescope?

Any tips/info is much appreciated!

Oh and greetings from Serbia! We hope to share pics with everybody as soon as we get all the equipment we need

Best Regards,
Mraki & Staki

[Elp]

Welcome. The first question I'd ask is what is your local light pollution like, or where you're likely to use said equipment? Can you see the milky way for example with your own eyes?

[Staki and Mraki]

Hey @Elp around our area, we can barely see the Milky way from our hometown, however we are big on camping and were planning to use the telescope from remote places such as montains and forests where there is little to no light pollution.

 

[CraigT82]

Hello! 

Welcome to the forum.

I think you’re looking at the Skywatcher heritage 150p table top dobsonian? If so that is a great choice for a starter scope for visual observing.  It is very simple and easy to use, and gives good views of most objects in the sky. It’s is very transportable too so good for camping. 
 

It is not really suitable for taking images with though as it does not have any kind of tracking to follow the objects across the sky. In order to take pictures of deep sky objects you need to take long exposures as the subjects are faint, Hence the need to track the objects across the sky to prevent images with trailing stars in them. It is possible to take short exposures and lots of them (thousands) but again this would be very tedious with a mount that doesn’t track.  Also the focuser on this model is very basic and is ok for visual use but for photography you can forget it! 
 

Visual observation and astrophotography are two very different disciplines and it’s very common to see people starting out asking about which scope to buy that can do both. In reality the best thing to do is decide right from the start of you want to see things through and eyepiece,  or take images, and then stick with your decision, and that will help you avoid wasting money.  It is generally cheaper to build up a respectable visual set up than it is to build up a respectable imaging set up. 
 

If you do have your heart set on imaging then something you might want to consider is using a DSLR and lens on a small star tracker which is a good way to get into astrophotography without spending lots 

[CraigT82]

Also… if you have been there yet the beginners section has some great info to help you decide. In particular:

 

 

[Elp]

If you can see the milky way, even slightly you've got a better chance than I do from a Bortle 7 zone (check a light pollution map to find out yours).

The heritage comes up a lot as a good starter scope, but as posted above with the links expect to temper how you'll see things visually. DSO objects usually are faint smudges, though I did see M101 galaxy distinctly from a Bortle 4 with a 6 inch dobsonian. The area however had next to no immediate LP, you couldn't see more than 4-5 metres away around you, I'd have zero chance seeing it from home.

This is generally where larger aperture comes into play, but larger apertures then lead to more sturdy mounting, it's why dobsonians get recommended a lot for visual as they're large Newtonian telescopes on a secure at ground level Dobson mount.

It hasn't been suggested as of yet but I'm sure others will recommend it, the ZWO Seestar S50 smart telescope, you can't look through it, but it's camera system will reveal far more than you will ever be able to see visually (within practical budget or size constraints), easy to use and control with your mobile phone, small and light enough to small backpack carry. You won't see planets in any clarity due to its short focal length, but most other things are fair game.

But, many people don't like smart telescopes and want to see with their eyes.

So your initial choice seems decent. My personal preference is refractors but you need to spend a lot to be able to use them well, more so if imaging is a consideration. Imaging with any setup requires considerable investment, extreme patience and problem solving capability, and for very good images good post processing software skills. The simplest way to image via a scope is to hold your phones camera over an eyepiece, it can be difficult to get the alignment right depending on the eyepiece so some sort of phone bracket makes it easier.

Imaging with a DSLR/bodied camera and lens is easier, but benefits greatly from a tracking mount. You can image starfields, open clusters, even M42 Orion Nebula and M31 Andromeda galaxy on a fixed tripod but will likely be limited to less than 10s exposures due to star trailing depending on the lens being used.

So many ways to approach both visual and imaging. It depends on what type of each you want to "specialise" in, it's very very rare to find one piece of equipment that can do all very well.

[Tony Acorn]

Hello you two and welcome,

My journey was to buy a 200mm Dobsonian through which I could "see" planets as small as Saturn, The Moon and some constellation details (Orion's Belt and sword). I wanted to see more so I went up to a 250mm Dob with Alt / Az controls. This was simply too big to be considered portable and isn't much use in high Bortle sites like a city for deep sky objects. I still have it but haven't used it in years.

I bought the SkyWatcher Star Adventurer 2i Pro wifi star tracker bundle and this was good to track stars and take exposures up to 2 minutes long but this is not an EQ mount so it doesn't track accurately enough for 3-5 minute exposures that you will need to image DSOs.

Can I suggest that you "learn to walk before you can run"? The 150 / 750 table-top Dob is a very good starting point. What you will see is dependant upon the range of eye-pieces you get. It comes with a 10mm and a 25mm Plossi eye-pieces and you can see the inner planets, The Moon, Jupiter and Saturn quite easily with them. A Barlow magnifies the image but also means the target moves across your view faster - a 2x barlow results in twice as fast, a 3x Barlow will be 3x as fast.

To photograph anything will require a lens adaptor assembly to convert the camera body to fit in the telescope's focuser. I was able to do some reasonable images with a Nikon D5000, a D5300 and a D7200, all of which are available second hand.

Hope that helps,

Tony

[Elp]

5 minutes ago, Tony Acorn said:

I bought the SkyWatcher Star Adventurer 2i Pro wifi star tracker bundle and this was good to track stars and take exposures up to 2 minutes long but this is not an EQ mount so it doesn't track accurately enough for 3-5 minute exposures that you will need to image DSOs.

Just an amendment here. I normally image DSOs within a range of 30-120s per exposure, even in narrowband (my NB starts at 60s up to 5 minutes), it is possible. The amount of total hours you put in makes up the difference.

Edited September 9 by Elp

[Tony Acorn]

7 minutes ago, Elp said:

Just an amendment here. I normally image DSOs within a range of 30-120s per exposure, even in narrowband (my NB starts at 60s up to 5 minutes), it is possible. The amount of total hours you put in makes up the difference.

Happy to stand corrected by Elp - his work is way better than anything I have achieved so far and now I have moved from DSLRs to dedicatwed Astro Cameras - much more expensive!

[wookie1965]

A warm welcome to SGL

[Staki and Mraki]

Hey guys,

Thanks for the great advise!

Reading through the replies we can see that it would be best to pick either watching or photographing. I think we will rather explore everything and learn as we go before we jump in the astrophotography world.

@Elp @CraigT82 @Tony Acorn thank you for the detailed replies, we will definitely check the links out to learn more, as we are brand new to the game and very exited to learn everything  

We've seen that some telescopes have a laser pointer for finding objects, this has been quite the puzzle to figure out, how is it used and is it the best for locating objects? And if so, can it be mounted on any telescope or just specific ones? 
@wookie1965 Thanks, glad to be here!

[Elp]

Be cautious of using laser pointers, you're not supposed to use them within the vicinity of aircraft, it might actually be illegal in countries to do so.

It is far better to learn the sky cross referencing with a stellarium (like the program or app Stellarium or Sky Safari) learning major constellations and star hopping to get to your target. You do this by aligning a finder scope, RACI finder (right angle corrected image) or RDF (red dot finder) with what your scope is aligned to (so they're both pointing dead centre at the same object, could be a star or planet), then you can use the finder to hop from star to star. The easiest finder I've personally used is a Rigel Quikfinder, the Telrad is an alternative.

[Floater]

Welcome. Hope you have lots of fun. 🙂

[Pete Presland]

Hi welcome to SGL from Pete in Bedfordshire 🙂

[Staki and Mraki]

Hey guys, so we decided to pursue Astrophotography instead, this is why we decided to rise our budget a bit for the first scope. 
The one we are looking at is the SkyWatcher 150/750 Heritage Virtuoso GTi, after some researching we found that it has the capabilities to take beautiful pictures while remaining portable and within our budget, it uses an app so that we can track objects through our phone!

Wanted to know everybody's thoughts on this one, if anyone has used it and has some pointers? 

We also found a couple of very encouraging videos for this scope, where all the benefits and drawbacks are shown:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0YbWyATAsA 

At 3:50 he shows the pictures they were able to take with this scope, to us this seems awesome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXW6IVE5DO4

One of the cons mentioned is that the focuser is 1:25' instead of the usual 2', this would mean that we would need an adapter for this, does this mean that if we want to use a DSLR camera, we would need some sort of an adapter as well?

Thank you for all the info provided, you guys rock!

 

 

[Astronomist]

10 minutes ago, Staki and Mraki said:

if we want to use a DSLR camera, we would need some sort of an adapter as well?

You will need an adapter to attach the camera whatever the focuser size, namely a t2 nosepiece and a t2-lens mount ring. For the 1.25" focuser you just need to make sure it is a 1.25" nosepiece.

If the DSLR has a 'full frame' sensor this will cause vignetting, where the corners of the sensor are shadowed by the nosepiece. Most DSLRs however have a smaller APS-C sensor, which will not experience these issues. 

Most people will reccomend a small refractor on an equatorial mount for astrophotography, as it is much easier than with a dob. A setup like that will be far more expensive.

[happy-kat]

Hi, many many telescopes are 1.25 no issues there. The adapters for either a DSLR or astro camera come in either 1.25 or 2 inch size

the  virtuoso is altaz mount tracking moves in tiny left right up down movements so tracks the object in the field of view but the target is rotating as the earth moves equatorially. Imaging DSO is possible but have  to work within the limits of when star trailing shows or rotation smearing. This is dependant on several factors but is measured in seconds anything from 5 -40.

Planets and Moon  are so bright that exposure there is much faster usually video, though fiddlier can be done with static mount.

Looks like the video uses sharpcap live stacking, EEA quite effective in showing way more quickly but they are using astro camera rather than DSLR.  Live stacking captures images repeatedly and layers and builds the image up and the stacking the image gets stronger and stronger.

Edited September 12 by happy-kat

[wesdon1]

On 09/09/2024 at 19:46, Staki and Mraki said:

Hey guys, my wife and I are interested in exploring the deep dark sky, we are complete newbies to this so any tips/pointers would be appreciated!

We are looking to buy the Skywatcher 150/750 Dobsion as our first telescope, we were thinking of getting a 2x barlow lens to go with it. Do you guys think this is a good choice for beginners? We are most interested in observing the deep sky objects and planets, we researched a little bit on the web and saw that people are singing praises for this telescope and it is within our budget!

If anybody has any suggestions please let us know! 

We are also looking into buying a DSLR camera for other reasons and are wondering if it will be able to pick up the images from the telescope?

Any tips/info is much appreciated!

Oh and greetings from Serbia! We hope to share pics with everybody as soon as we get all the equipment we need

Best Regards,
Mraki & Staki

 

On 09/09/2024 at 20:07, CraigT82 said:

Hello! 

Welcome to the forum.

I think you’re looking at the Skywatcher heritage 150p table top dobsonian? If so that is a great choice for a starter scope for visual observing.  It is very simple and easy to use, and gives good views of most objects in the sky. It’s is very transportable too so good for camping. 
 

It is not really suitable for taking images with though as it does not have any kind of tracking to follow the objects across the sky. In order to take pictures of deep sky objects you need to take long exposures as the subjects are faint, Hence the need to track the objects across the sky to prevent images with trailing stars in them. It is possible to take short exposures and lots of them (thousands) but again this would be very tedious with a mount that doesn’t track.  Also the focuser on this model is very basic and is ok for visual use but for photography you can forget it! 
 

Visual observation and astrophotography are two very different disciplines and it’s very common to see people starting out asking about which scope to buy that can do both. In reality the best thing to do is decide right from the start of you want to see things through and eyepiece,  or take images, and then stick with your decision, and that will help you avoid wasting money.  It is generally cheaper to build up a respectable visual set up than it is to build up a respectable imaging set up. 
 

If you do have your heart set on imaging then something you might want to consider is using a DSLR and lens on a small star tracker which is a good way to get into astrophotography without spending lots 

@Staki and Mraki Hi and welcome to the forum. I consider @CraigT82 advice/suggestions to be the best here.

I would just like to also suggest keeping things fun in the beginning, by that I mean try not to overwhelm yourselves with trying to master astrophotography before you've even started doing visual astronomy, it'll just drain the life ( and fun/motivation! ) out of you! lol. get comfortable looking around the night sky, finding pretty objects, understand what eyepieces work best for what night sky object you're viewing, etc etc etc and then maybe begin the process of learning astrophotography. Trust me, astrophotography is an incredibly fun and rewarding hobby, but it requires significant time, money and dedication to be worthwhile.

I'll end with a wise old quote "Try not to run before you have learned to walk!..." 😊

Best of luck!

Wes, Liverpool.

[orion25]

Welcome to you both. Enjoy your stay in SGL

Reggie

[wookie1965]

A warm welcome to SGL

[Sunshine]

Welcome!

[RT65CB-SWL]

Good day🇬🇧 /  Добар дан🇷🇸 @Staki and Mraki and welcome to SGL.