Quote:
Originally Posted by berettafan
curious are there mounts that could do the job for less $$$$?
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I remember when I first started looking into it, there was some mount, I think it was a something EQ5 or something like that, that was about $1500-1600. Most folks said that was the best balance of cost and quality for AP.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rickysa
I'd really like to get into this. I looked into it briefly a few years ago, but got discouraged due to local light pollution, overwhelming product info, and general ignorance. Can someone dumb it down a bit to give a general idea of what you would need to purchase to do deep space photography?
Type of telescope, software, mount, CCI (which is, I believe the way the images are captured), etc.
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Probably the easiest would be a scope on a tracking mount with a DSLR w a telephoto lens piggybacked.
Lots of AP these days is done with DSLRs, some is done with dedicated AP cameras. For long exposures with pinpoint stars especially at high magnification, you'll need a quality ($$$) tracking mount and a guide scope. Yeah, you strap 2 telescopes together, and use 2 "cameras". One camera is taking the photos, and the other is watching some star, and using a computer to keep that star stationary (pretty much all mounts will skew a bit while tracking which causes issues with long exposures, so you use the guide scope/camera to compensate for the skew).
The two sites below have some decent info about doing AP (astrophotography) on a budget.
BudgetAstro - Home
This one shows a couple of mounts that are in the $1200-1600 range, I think.
Beginner Equipment for Astrophotography
One of the things to remember is that the more magnified you want to go, the more money you'll need to spend on the gear. If you are using a DSLR for a wide angle shot of the milkyway, you don't need much equipment. If you want to zoom way in on some DSO (deep sky object), you'll need a better mount and tracking.
Also, the darker the skies the better, but some amount of LP (light pollution) can be dealt with.
A huge part of the process is the post processing that's often/usually done in photoshop.