confused of Telford.....:-s

[steve359]

Hi all, well needless to say I NEED help!!! right, to start i'm new and my wife got me a GCSE Distance Learning course on Astronomy, I think because she brought me a scope a year before and I'd hardly touched it. After much thourght, I decided to get the scope I thought was the best in my price range i.e. SkyWatcher Skyliner 300P FlexTube Dobsonian THEN I starting reading more in here and now am VERY confused...! You see the problem I have is I'm more attracted to Deep Sky Objects and Photography. I read on here that the Dob is not a great one for tracking, I should have guessed really thinking about it...I wasn't going to have a GOTO which would knock the scope out of my range, so I would have fallen at the last hurdle... Sorry, trying to get to the point:icon_confused: Would anyone out there be able to advice on what I should get. BTW don't think this is a fad. Since I got the course work you wouldn't believe how much I've not only learned but enjoyed learning. Oh and when i say my price range I mean i'll save in about 6 months:) Sorry it took me so long to get to the point didn't mean to write a book. Thnks in advance:D

[markophoto]

Hi Steve

I've looked at the very same scope, and thought about the GOTO version of it.

I can't decide whether that's the one I want, or whether to go for a smaller aperture scope like the 200 or 250 and have it with a EQ mount.

I'm not an expert at all, but the advice I've been given so far is that you really need a EQ mount for imaging DSO's and one that will track I think.

The 300P is an almighty beast, so its probably not best suited for photography if that's the way you're thinking of heading.

Other people have advised on the possibility of getting two scopes, a big dobs and a smaller refractor for imaging.

So I too have lots of options to look at, and like you I'm saving up and probably won't be splashing the cash until later on this year.

Hope thats useful, and I'm sure others will be along very soon who have experience of owning these type of scopes

Marko

[steve359]

Thanks Marko, and good luck with your scope, hope you make the right choice as nobody else has replied i've been looking around again and found the SkyWatcher Skymax 150 Pro EQ5 and the Celestron C8 NGC they look as though they can do the job, observing and imaging, so i think it will be one of them... but which??? lol anybody out there got one of these?

Steve

[adamsp123]

If you have a keen interest in getting into astro imaging then my first recommendation is to buy Steves' book (steppenwolf in the forum) "Making every photon count", a must IMO for the budding imager... and it will save you money in the long run.

A couple of other things I would say are, build from the ground up...best Equatorial mount you can afford HEQ5 or EQ6 for example, aperture does not rule for imaging so there are a wide range of scopes suitable, the ones with the lower focal ratios and smaller aperture are the easiest to use....but remember the cost adders eg flattener for a refractor or coma corrector for a Newtonian etc etc.

but first get that book!

[brantuk]

Large aperture newtonians are great for observing dso's - probably the best when used in a very dark site and clear skies. But the dobson mount is essentially an alt/az mount which doesn't follow the natural path of the stars.

So you have to track in two planes (up/down, L/R). This style of tracking is inadequate for long exposure photography.

EQ mounts on the other hand can be polar aligned and as such will track in a single plane (RA). So you can get longer exposures without disturbing the other plane (DEC). Typically a motorised one will stay on target for one or two mins exposures.

For proper imaging of dso's though, you really need tracking and guiding. Another attached scope can be used to lock on a guide star and feed back tracking data to keep the imaging scope on target for 10 or 20 mins exposures. Faint dso's demand this length of exposure to give the photons time to gather on the camera chip for meaningful data.

Hope that helps explain why

[dmahon]

Your scope is a good one for viewing DSOs, but you need something different for photography. Unfortunately everything is a compromise: planets/DSOs, visual/photography and obviously cost comes into it as well. Without spending an absolute fortune, if you want to do everything, you get more than one scope.

To start out in astrophotography, you need a sturdy motorised equatorial mount (not necessarily GOTO), a lightweight short focal ratio scope and a camera. A good start would be an ED80 scope and a HEQ5 mount - this will set you back over £800 new I'm afraid, and there are plenty of other bits to buy as you get into it - guiding will cost you another £250 for example. I'd spend the extra £100 at the beginning on a Syntrek version of the HEQ5, as you will want GOTO through a laptop eventually to allow you to take pictures of objects that you can't even see through an eyepiece.

You could possibly knock a bit off and get a cheaper EQ5 mount, but by the time you add guiding and cameras to your scope, you would probably wish you had spent the extra.

[steve359]

Thanks for opening my eyes to the world of imaging... Now i've been thinking if I could upgrade the scope I already have. Bresser Skylux NG, small focal length and I have a Nikon D5000. Any good? I think I may know the answer to this but I'll put it out there anyway...