Need some help purchasing my first telescope for astrophotos.

[Needlefeet]

I want to start out with some astrophotography but I'm unsure about several things, mostly the telescope.

I have a DSLR camera already, but I'm not sure as to which telescope to get. I want to be able to capture galaxies and nebula, as well as the planets in our solar system.

I was looking at the Omni XLT 150 by Celestron and some of the Skywatcher ones, but I don't know.

I'd like something that I would be able to connect to my laptop. My budget is around 500$ because it's my first one and I don't want to go all out quite yet.

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks

[Astro_Baby]

At $500 I would suggest you need to rethink. Astrophotography even at the cheap end is more expensive. Plantes could be handled with a webcam and almost anything DSO stuff (nebula etc) is highly complex - both expensive and time consuming.

Doubtless one of the imagers would be able to give you a more complete answer but I suspect for $500 you will struggle to do any astro-photography.

[Jupiter Martin]

For imagine the mount is really the most important item in the imagers kit. a solid mount with quality tracking is what is required.

[Needlefeet]

At $500 I would suggest you need to rethink. Astrophotography even at the cheap end is more expensive. Plantes could be handled with a webcam and almost anything DSO stuff (nebula etc) is highly complex - both expensive and time consuming.

Doubtless one of the imagers would be able to give you a more complete answer but I suspect for $500 you will struggle to do any astro-photography.

I don't understand where the webcam comes in at all. I already have a camera; a Nikon D40. Why would I even bother with a webcam? I'm much more curious about the telescope.

Recommendations there would be nice.

[SkyExplorer]

Webcams are used for taking video of the planets. Over say 1 minute, 3600 images are taken (at 60fps). Software then picks the best frames and combines them to make an image.

This approach I believe negates the need for an expensive computerised tracking mount as you do not need to have long exposures when taking images of the planets so.

[Needlefeet]

Thank you for clarifying that for me! I'm still really new to all of this. My wife and I have been eager to start doing this as a hobby.

Also, I wanted to note that the 500$ budget was only referring to the telescope, not my entire set up, in case that wasn't clear.

Thanks again.

[Cornelius Varley]

Planetary photography is generally done using a webcam. A webcam can take several hundreds of images in a short time, saved as an AVI video. The AVI is then processed in Registax to stack the best of the still images obtained from the AVI. The stacked images are further enhanced to bring out the finer detail. Webcams are more suited to planetary photography than DSLRs due to their smaller sensor size.

If you are serious about photographing DSOs then your budget of $500 would not even cover the cost of a suitable mount. The mount is more important than the telescope. It needs to be stable and able to track accurately and should also have a ST4 autoguider port if you intend to use exposures of more than 2mins. Long exposures with an unguided mount that has bad polar alignment / bad tracking will start to show star trails very quickly. Good budget mounts include the Skywatcher HEQ5 Pro and EQ6 Pro or their Orion equivalents. ($1150 / $1400 USD)

Planetary / lunar photography is easier and can be cheaper because you don't need a mount with a ST4. A mount with simple dual axis motor drives is sufficient. Your D40 would be fine for lunar photography but you would be disappointed with results photographing planets.

Peter

[Helen]

It might seem that everyone is being negative about what you can achieve on such a small budget, but that's the voice of bitter experience talking! If your mount doesn't track well then you'll soon get very frustrated about the quality of your images, and processing is much harder with shorter exposures. The minimum I'd suggest is a celestron CG5. You will be able to get a scope that is suitable for imaging for quite a reasonable cost eg an ED80 which will not require a huge mount. Don't think you need a large scope for deep sky work - scopes like the ED80 can produce spectacular results and are more forgiving of tracking errors. And if you decide you want to go further then you can keep the ED80 and use if for guiding.

You should also consider buying secondhand. Astronomers generally look after their kit very well, and you can save yourself quite a lot of money that way - so your budget will go further. Also if/when you want to upgrade you'll be able to sell the equipment on with little loss.

Helen

[ottUp]

Thank you for clarifying that for me! I'm still really new to all of this. My wife and I have been eager to start doing this as a hobby.

Also, I wanted to note that the 500$ budget was only referring to the telescope, not my entire set up, in case that wasn't clear.

Thanks again.

Hi Needle

Here is an article that covers some of the basics of getting set up for astrophotography, that might help you sort out the field.

For your stated budget, you can certainly hook up the camera and take some kind of picture, and you can get surprisingly good pictures of the moon, because it is so bright that you can use short exposures and the camera's auto-exposure circuits. However, assuming that you want to take long-exposure images of deep sky objects (you mentioned galaxies), the sad truth is that you'll need to invest more time, effort, and money on the mount.

I'm assuming that when yo said "$500 for the telescope" you meant the telescope and the mount (tripod). $500ish for the telescope (optics alone, not including the mount) is reasonable, but you need to plan to spend considerably more than that on the mount or your scope won't be held steady enough, or track smoothly enough, for long exposures.

The other problem is that mounts and scopes well-suited to visual use are not necessarily well-suited to astrophotography, and vice-versa. If you are just starting out in astronomy, it's a very good idea to spend a couple of years on just visual use (observing live with an eyepiece), with a scope that is optimized for that, to get to know the operation of a telescope, before tackling photography. Photography is far harder than you think, and drives many beginners away from the hobby by being more frustrating than anticipated.

The '150 scope you mentioned would be a fine visual scope, and you could move the same optics to an upgraded mount later. And it will work right away with the Webcam approach already mentioned, which is one good entry path to astrophotography. The idea is to leave your DSLR indoors for a couple of years, and learn the far easier art of photographing the moon and bright planets with a webcam attached to the telescope. This will be challenging enough, learning to focus on objects too dim to see, get the mount tracking accurately, process the images on the computer, etc. Once that is easy, you can start tackling the challenge of long-exposure photos with the DSLR.

The best thing you could do first is hook up with a local astronomy club, and find a buddy who is doing astrophotography with modest-end equipment, for advice on what works and what doesn't.

- Richard

[sgazer]

hi,

there is no limit on how much you can spend on imaging, the quality of the images is partly down to equipment and partly technique. I have a reasonable level of equipment, but I'm still wanting!

It can be done on a budget, but then you will probably want to improve on the images which will mean replacing the equipment.

On a limited budget, it's best to choose fairly wide field imaging, that way you won't have to move into autoguiding so quickly which pushes the costs up.

What lenses do you have on your D40? Some amazing images can be taken just with the camera lenses. a 50mm is a nice widefield, 200-300mm will get some of the larger DSOs to fill the frame. Then you can spend the money on a decent mount.

Otherwise a small, fast focal ratio scope would be best (eg. f5) as a small scope won't put too much demand on the mount.

An ALT-AZ mount with tracking will be easy to use, but will limit exposures to 30-60secs. eg. SLT Series

An EQ mount will be better, a bit more difficult to use and will need a motor in at least the RA axis. eg. Skywatcher - Skywatcher EQ5 Deluxe plus motors

A short focus achromatic scope will give reasonable images apart from the blue halos, and are cheap. eg. Startravel

It all depends where you want to start and what your expectations are. I think when I started I would have been quite happy with a small refractor or just the camera lens on a lightweight mount, although I went the opposite way and got a large scope on a large mount and ended up downsizing. Good luck with your choice.

[jgs001]

You don't actually need a telescope for Astrophotography, you can achieve wide field images with a 50mm lens, and even get good results from something like 200mm. Ok, you'll miss out on image scale for the smaller targets, but there's plenty up there that'll keep you busy at that sort of level. That would mean you can put your entire budget into a decent mount. The heavier duty the better, it'll prevent you from having to splash out on another mount later on. It's worth getting something that will allow for guiding, but to begin with, just the mount, camera and lens will suffice and provide you plenty of challenges. You can always add a telescope, guide scope and camera etc at a later date.

[Wobbly Bob]

You don't actually need a telescope for Astrophotography, you can achieve wide field images with a 50mm lens, and even get good results from something like 200mm. Ok, you'll miss out on image scale for the smaller targets, but there's plenty up there that'll keep you busy at that sort of level. That would mean you can put your entire budget into a decent mount. The heavier duty the better, it'll prevent you from having to splash out on another mount later on. It's worth getting something that will allow for guiding, but to begin with, just the mount, camera and lens will suffice and provide you plenty of challenges. You can always add a telescope, guide scope and camera etc at a later date.

John has echoed my thoughts. As you may have noticed by the preceeding posts, the scope is not the issue here, its the mount thats important. I would save a few more $ and go for the HEQ5 as it will have every thing you need.

[brantuk]

Start with a webcam to keep it cheap as most are suggesting and go for solar system objects first. This will get you accustomed to the setup, software, and processing first. And it'll leave you more money for decent optics and mount.

If you get the right webcam, it can be upgraded later and quite reasonably for long exposure and dso's (check out the astronomiser site for ideas). Or save whilst you are learning for a better camera (e.g. a ccd or dslr). You'll have plenty of time cos the learning curve is very steep.

All the best

[Needlefeet]

Thanks guys! You all have been very helpful. This whole thing seems like an arduous task, but it definitely seems worth it. I'm going to try my hand at viewing and photographing the solar system and constellations first, just to get acquainted with the way things work and all that.

I'm going to be joining the Los Angeles Astronomical Society during the year and I'm sure their guidance will be helpful.

What are the things I should be looking for in terms of optics and mounts? How many inches? Should I opt for a GOTO? I found that Telescopes.com has an array of product for a slightly cheaper price than you'd find at other places. As for a webcam, would any webcam suffice or should I be looking at one in particular?

[pvaz]

The best advice I can give you is to have a look at our imaging section, see the pictures posted there, and average the gear used by the authors.

I have done that and a quality 80mm refractor along with a good steady mount (HEQ5 or EQ6) and a Canon 350D or 1000D seams to be the most common setup for quality photos.

The 80mm refrator won't be very good for visual as you need as much aperture as you can get, cause your eyes won't be able to do long exposures or post processing on a computer.

I was in the same position as you a few months ago, having a background in amateur photography and wanting to start on astro imaging. I decided the best was to start purely visual so I got myself a dobsodian telescope that offers me the most aperture for my money, but isn't suited for any astro photography. My next step, towards the end of the year, will be to get a steady mount and use the DSLR without a telescope and start learning the basics with wide field photography. I have a few lenses and I'll be able to switch between 18mm and 400mm, which is nearly as much as some widefield small refractor. Later on I'll add the scope to the mix as it brings a lot of issues with it.

After a lot of reading on the subject (read 2 books on astro imaging) this seamed, to me, the best route to success.

[astoc]

Very glad I read this thread. As someone beginning in astronomy myself I too have been bitten by the imaging bug and was mentally planning a route to astrophotography using a decent sized telescope. It had not occurred to me that the mount would be the most important factor, and so for now I think i'll confine my options to visual only - a HEQ5 would be well out of my budget, lol.

John

[RobH]

John.

For planetary and lunar photography, you can get away with a cheap mount as you aren't trying to track accurately for long periods of time. It doesn't even need to be equatorial.

My first images were of the moon done with a point and click camera looking down the eyepiece, and the results were not bad at all.

Cheers

Rob

[astoc]

Yeah. I have an old (but still working just great!) fuji S7000 that i've wanted to experiment with. It wont cost much to attach to a scope really, so at the very least I can play around with some lunar shots and stuff

John

[Chris Stacey]

The best advice I can give you is to have a look at our imaging section, see the pictures posted there, and average the gear used by the authors.

I have done that and a quality 80mm refractor along with a good steady mount (HEQ5 or EQ6) and a Canon 350D or 1000D seams to be the most common setup for quality photos.

The 80mm refrator won't be very good for visual as you need as much aperture as you can get, cause your eyes won't be able to do long exposures or post processing on a computer.

I was in the same position as you a few months ago, having a background in amateur photography and wanting to start on astro imaging. I decided the best was to start purely visual so I got myself a dobsodian telescope that offers me the most aperture for my money, but isn't suited for any astro photography. My next step, towards the end of the year, will be to get a steady mount and use the DSLR without a telescope and start learning the basics with wide field photography. I have a few lenses and I'll be able to switch between 18mm and 400mm, which is nearly as much as some widefield small refractor. Later on I'll add the scope to the mix as it brings a lot of issues with it.

After a lot of reading on the subject (read 2 books on astro imaging) this seamed, to me, the best route to success.

That's basically the same route I am taking. Got a 200 Dob, and just concentrated on using that and get a few accessories for it. Bought a HEQ5 towards the end of last year, and I'm using my Nikon D40 on it, just getting to grips with the basics.....but buying little odds and sods along the way as they come up cheap, filter wheel and things like that...

When I feel confident with the D40, and the process of getting a reasonable image, I'll put the 200 on the HEQ5, invest in a better camera and go from there...