Telescope / Astrophotography Recommendations?

[tangerine911S]

At our cabin in Maine there are some very spectacular night skies. The thought of having a nice telescope has crossed my mind a few times recently. Problem is I know nothing about them. Im looking for reccomendations as to type and size that would allow me to see planets and galaxies. I recently bought a decent DSLR camera, a Canon XSI. I would like to use it to take what I have seen referred to as "deep sky" photos. What kind of additional equipment or adapters are needed? I dont know my price range is because I dont know the cost of a decent telescope. What would I be looking at for a decent or slightly better than decent setup that will take these kinds of pictures? Anyone have any experience with this? I'd appreciate any info.

[tangerine911S]

Just saw a link on the random pic thread and went to the Meade site. Looks like nice ones are $600-$1000?

Edit: On second look, a bit more than that.

[VaSteve]

Subscribed. I have this old telescope that was my dad's. He gave it to me a while (years) back. I have no idea how to set it up. Anyone know a good site on this stuff?

[krichard]

I think your going to need to lease some time on the hubble if you want shots like those The only way to get deep space shots like those requires very long exposer which also requires auto tracking and extreme stability.

[TerryH]

Most of the deep sky photos you see can be hundreds of photos layered together. There is software out there that can help.

I've taken fuzzy photos of Saturn where the rings are visible and Jupiter's and it's moons, but I'm a real greenhorn and my scope is a runt. It's fun, but I never invested any real money into doing it right.

[dhoward]

I use a Meade LX-90 and a dedicated CCD camera.
Is your digital capable of long exposures? 30 secs?
If so, you can use stacking software to create a long exposure and reduce the amount of noise generated by the CCD in your camera.



And as you might have guessed, it was shower time at the neighbor's house...

[Mr.Puff]

-You want a reflection telescope vs. a refraction telescope.



-The bigger the diameter of the telescope the better. More light is the goal!

-Magnification does not matter at all. It's all about angular resolution.

That is about it. I don't know much about software. You can buy a little observatory dome for your backyard . A quick search finds one:

http://www.skyshedpod.com/

[Mr.Puff]

Oh yeah, you can tell that photo was taken using a reflector telescope because of the star shapes coming off of the individual points of light. Those little lines are the supports on the inside of the telescope holding up the secondary mirror. We all know that otherwise the stars would be perfect orbs .

[911/914gary]

Check out the Cloudynights "Astrophotography and Sketching" forum. There is also a great beginners forum. Loads of information. Be sure to review the "stickies" at the top of each section.

http://www.cloudynights.com

[tangerine911S]

I see that Dobsonian telescopes seem to have larger aperatures, lower prices, and are more portable. Are there disadvantages to these types?

[dhoward]

Generally Dobs don't have mounts that track accurately enough for AP. Great for visuals though. Excellent $/in.

[Pazuzu]

Don't get into photography just yet, spend some time with a scope and the night sky first. Get a pair of 8x50 binocs, and sit out looking up for a few hours. With those alone you can see planets and galaxies, clusters, nebula, etc. Enough stuff to keep you busy for 6 months.

Then buy an 8 inch Dobsonian, it'll keep you busy for 2 more years.

Then buy an 8 or 10 inch Meade tracking SCT, it'll keep you busy for 10 more years.

At some point, you'll realize what you want/need for photography, if you even want to do it at that point.

Astrophotography is a painful, rigorous endevour that involves lots of time spending money, ******* with equipment, and swearing, and very little time seeing anything. Dobsonians involve 99% time seeing things, and 1% time screwing with equipment.

[masraum]

Telescopes for visual are one thing, but telescopes for Astrophotorgraphy are something else entirely.

The problem with trying to do astrophotography, is that you NEED long exposures to do it really well. Since the earth is rotating, that makes it look like the stars are moving. At 300mm, you can see movement of the stars in under a second (they look like dashes instead of dots).

For astrophotography you need a tracking mount. The cheapest tracking mounts out there that most AP guys would consider start at around $700. The more serious mounts run $1000-1500.

AP is a whole different beast. I'd get into visual and then work your way up to AP.

[TerryH]

Okay.. no laughing. Took this with my wimpy 60mm Meade a few years ago. No editting or enhancements. Used a camera mount and my first digital camera which wasn't made for this type of picture taking. All in all, I was amazed to see any detail.

I'm in the LA area which is the worst place in the world for star gazing. We're lucky to see the moon occasionally. Light pollution is worse than the air pollution.

I took some nice solar photos (with appropriate filters) and eclipse shots, but they're on a hard drive that's not installed atm.

In case you can't tell, it's Saturn!

[Rick Lee]

I was at a company event in Tucson a few years ago and the company brought in an amateur astronomer and his telescope to show stuff to folks and chat about it. It was unbelieveable. I loved every second of that and hogged the guy's time. I forget what he had, but he said it was about $6500 for everything. He had a motor on it with preprogrammed coordinates and could make it swing around to find whichever planet or constellation you asked him about. Definitely on my long-term toy shopping list.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

I was at a company event in Tucson a few years ago and the company brought in an amateur astronomer and his telescope to show stuff to folks and chat about it. It was unbelieveable. I loved every second of that and hogged the guy's time. I forget what he had, but he said it was about $6500 for everything. He had a motor on it with preprogrammed coordinates and could make it swing around to find whichever planet or constellation you asked him about. Definitely on my long-term toy shopping list.

These days you can get a telescope with "GoTo" for way under $1000.

For telescopes, aperture is king. The bigger the telescope, the more you'll see, but then that only makes sense, right. You can get big scopes relatively cheap if you get one on a Dobsonian mount. You can get Dobsonian mounted telescopes with a "push to" system still cheaper than a same size telescope of a motorized platform.

The options these days for folks that want to get into astronomy are far better than they've ever been before.

One note, generally, what you can see with your eye is nothing like what you'd see in a photo.

And, to get the best results, you really need to travel away from city's and light pollution. The difference is amazing. Looking through the telescope from my house, I can see a fraction of the objects that I can see at my mother's house with a pair of binoculars.

[nota]

the best scope is one you can use
if you have a big truck or van a big dob is ok
but no way will a big dob fit in a 911

celestron makes a folded mirror + LENS SCOPE
that is very compac so is eazy to move at about 1/4 as long
as a mirror dob of the same dia

[masraum]

An 8" or 10" dob would probably work in a 911.

There are also strut Dobs that are even smaller when disassembled.

Schmidt Cassegrain telescopes are shorter than Newtonian telescopes (what Dobs usually are).

[targa911S]

My set up is very similar to Dans. The Schmit Cass. is the way to go for photos just think of it as a 2000 mm lens for your camera. You will need motorized declination and RA controls. Don't scrimp on the scope as it will just frustrate you later. For deep sky stuff you will need to use an off axis guider so you can manually adjust for errors in your polar alignment. You will never get that perfect. You will have to use long exposures so you will have to track and adjust manually. A cable release is good but I normally just put a piece of black cardboard over the lens of the tele, open the shutter, lock it open and wait a few seconds for the shake of you screwing around to go away. Then I gently remove the cardboard. Set the timer and when you get to the exposure time you want carefully replace the cardboard, then close the shutter of the camera. The Orion nebula is an easy target and a good first time shot. It usually comes out very different than what you see through the eyepiece. If you are using film it is even more dramatic because film is more sensitive to color than your eye. For really long exposures keep film and camera in the fridge to slow down the reciprocity failure or the ability of the film to record an image. You have LOTS to learn, and they will never look like Hubble. Get to know the sky well and it will make AP much more fun.

[Hoots]

Meade ETX Premier Edition-125