CN FORUMS ARCHIVE Telescope Reviews: What would I need to start taking pictures?

The 10 inch Newtonian on a CG5 mount is a very nice visual setup but you're loading a lot of weight on the mount already, and you haven't added cameras or accessories like a guide scope yet, which will definitely push up the load on your mount. The rule of thumb for imaging is to load the mount at around half its capacity for stability reasons. This is a big consideration when you're choosing what to buy.

If I were you, I'd take a look at the work produced by the folks here on CN, and find out what their setups are like. Chances are that they tell you, either in the messages they post or in their signature lines, but if all else fails, just ask - I'd be willing to bet that anyone who is making images of a quality that you'd like to emulate will enjoy talking about their gear!

You might decide that you need to make some changes in your rig as well as adding cameras to it, or even that the smart move is to buy a whole new rig just for imaging, and keep the 10 inch so that you have something to look through while you cameras are catching photons! How far you go down this road is a question nobody can answer but you.

You should be aware that you're really talking about two very different disiplines when you talk about planetary and deep-sky imaging. To do each type really well requires different equipment.

As you may have heard, our very talented friend Suk Lee is getting out of astro imaging altogether, and he's selling his entire rig.

(Here's a shameless plug for Suk: If you really want to jump in with both feet, you can save a ton of money and experimentation by buying Suk's rig. I know that this may sound weird, but it is a real steal at $25,000.00 for the scopes, mount, cameras - the works! I'm not kidding!)

Now I don't expect that you'd be interested in that large an investment. I mention it for a couple of reasons, though.

The primary message is that your options are truly only limited by the depth of your pockets. As first-rate as Suk's rig is, I'm positive that he could easily find ways to upgrade it if that was his aim.

The second is this: remember when I said that DSO and planetary work are two very different disciplines? For planets, Suk uses an inexpensive webcam, because that's all you really need. I personally don't know of anything that does a better job on the planets than the right webcam. Also, planetary work does not require high precision gear either, so the gear you have right now can be put right to work as is. If you can center a planet's image in a high-power eyepeice (say a 6-9mm Plossl, or a 15mm Plossl in a 2X barlow) and have it stay in the field of view for 3 or 4 minutes, chances are you have all the rig you need for planetary work.

This is because planets are really bright. The camera can catch a frame in a fraction of a second, capture thousands of frames over a few minutes time, and software can work with those frames to give you a nice image.

OTOH, deep-sky objects are dim, so dim that many times you can barely even see them visually, and you can almost never make out much color or detail. The cameras for this kind of work need to be able to take exposures from several seconds up to several hours in length to get a single frame. Some guys take exposures over several nights (weeks, even) to get enough frames to make a nice shot. Your gear absolutely has to be able to keep the light falling on the same pixel on your cameras' chip over the whole exposure time in order for you to get a clear picture out of it. Understandably, this requires a much more complicated and sensitive camera, and also puts great demands on your mount. Here also is the place where the money starts to add up!

That's why some guys have suggested a Digital SLR as a camera for this kind of work. Since that's the road I'm travelling myself, I can't argue with that logic, but I have a couple of strong suggestions as well.

I would treat this as two different "projects" - learn planetary astrophotography and deep sky astrophotography separately.

For planetary work: Get a webcam and an adapter to plug it into your focuser, or possibly consider a camera that is webcam-based but is already set up for astronomical use. One good choice for a camera might be one of the SAC 7 series of cameras from SAC Imaging. This camera works really well for planetary imaging, much better than the DSI or LPI for this job IMO.

The main reason I mention going this route though is because the camera will be able to serve you long term for multiple uses. These cameras are also equipped to do long exposures, so they could be used as an entry level deep sky camera with capabilities very similar to the DSI, or as an excellent imager to use with an autoguider program once you're ready to try your hand at that.

But the bottom line is this - get some kind of webcam based imager and use it to learn how to shoot planets and the Moon. You should progress fairly rapidly, and you can get decent images out of your current gear.

For deep sky: if you have a camera that can be mounted on a tripod, has a long exposure ("bulb") mode, and has a wide angle or zoom lens, you can get started right away learning what you need to know. Most 35mm SLR type cameras have this capability. If you don't have such a camera, consider a DSLR like the Digital Rebel or the Nikon equivalent.

You can start by taking 15 or 20 second tripod mounted constellation shots, go from there to making cool star trail shots (which essentialy is just exposing for longer periods of time, processing and combining several frames to create a long trail), move up to piggy-backing your camera on your scope, and eventually graduate to using the scope as the camera's lens - learning every step of the way.

Reading up on the subject can't hurt, either. This is a web page for an excellent book on the subject for someone who is thinking about starting down this road... they even let you read Chapter 1 to let you have an idea of what you can learn.

After all this reading and practice time has passed (it seems like it'll take forever), you'll definitely have a good idea of what you need to do (or have) with respect to your gear!

Bottom line for this - get some kind of suitable camera and start down a long learning curve! Don't be tempted to skip any steps - everything builds on some prerequiste, so patience and persistence pays off in knowlege! This aspect of the hobby is going to be the expensive one!

Well, I've definitely rambled on way longer than I had planned on - I hope that at least I didn't completely bore you to tears!

Good luck!

Charlie

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Weston CSC: