curious about astrophotography

[funkysandman]

Since I live outside the city, I get alot of relatively light-free nights to see the stars. I don't own a telescope, but for kicks, I thought maybe taking some pics using a mount that compensates for the earth's rotation would be fun. What would be a resonable route to explore:
-invest in a telescope that has a motor driven mount?
-invest in a basic mount by itself?
I'd like to hear what people recommend.
I should mention that my budget is a priority too.
Thanks for any input!

[skipper34]

The first thing I would invest in for beginning astrophotography is a sturdy tripod and a remote shutter release. Start off right by simply taking some shots of the moonless night sky with the camera mounted on the tripod. I would use a normal or wide prime lens to start. If your particular camera has noise reduction, I would use that. Set the shutter to bulb for long exposure. Bracket your exposures starting at 30 seconds, and up and down from there. Also, bracket your aperature setting from wide open to stopped down 1 or 2 stops. Experiment and see what you come up with. You may be pleasantly surprised by what you can capture using this simple method. If you decide to take it a step further, try using a barn-door tracker which you can build yourself, or, if you are interested in astronomy in general, go for a good beginner scope on a sturdy equitorial mount, preferrably with a motorized clock drive. The mount is much more important than the scope. Even the finest scopes in the world are worthless on a flimsy mount. If you do go that route, try piggybacking your camera on the scope and take some guided shots of the milky way using the same technique as on the tripod above. In other words, start out in the shallow end of the pool before you dive off the deep end. Otherwise you may end up with alot of expensive equipment that you don't use from being frustrated learning how to do it. Start slow and work your way up. Decide if astrophotography is for you. This is my best advice.

[funkysandman]

thanks skipper
I think I'm at the barn-door stage, as I've made a few star trail pics and I built myself a little remote switch (thanks to Radio Shack). I don't have a great tripod, just a cheap plastic one. I guess I'll eventually need a better tripod one way or another. Are there tripods that double as a telescope mount?

[skipper34]

There are some photographic tripods which you could mount a small telescope on, but they would not be an equitorial mount. It depends on what type of head was on the tripod, but it would be an Alt-Az mount and not able to track the stars.

[Adrena1in]

What exactly is your budget? Because although some people here spend tens of thousands on their mounts and scopes, a few hundred can get you something pretty decent.

I personally wouldn't buy a regular camera tripod if it's primarily going to be used for astrophotography. You might as well go the whole hog and get an equatorial mount. You might need to fiddle a bit, but you should easily be able to attach your camera to such a mount without the need for a telescope. I started with a secondhand Skywatcher EQ1, then bought a motor drive for it, and it was okay really. At wide angles, (good for shooting constellations or the Milky Way), I could expose for a minute or two quite happily.

As Skipper said, best to avoid an Alt-Az style mount. These *can* track the stars, but the way they work causes field rotation. An equatorial mount tracks properly.

[funkysandman]

I noticed a local ad for a used refractor telescope 90mm f10 with an eq-mount , piggy back for 35mm, and some eye pieces (10mm,25mm Ke,32mm plossl). I could buy a motor drive for it I assume. It's a vista 109 e which seems similar to the skywatchers. The price is $350 cdn. I will see if I can price an eq1 around here. (my budget is closer to the couple / few hundred mark.

[luigis]

You can produce fairly amazing pictures without any special equipment using Stacking.

The recipe is:

- Get a very solid tripod
- [optional] Get one intervalometer remote from ebay (they are around $30)
- Take 40/50 pictures of some area of the sky at ISO1600, a luminous aperture like F4 and the longest shutter speed you can afford without producing star trails. (The intervalometer is handy for this but you can click click your way to the 50 pics)
- Stack all the pictures using DeepSkyStacker (free software)
- Voila!

If your camera has Liveview is great for focusing.

The key is to have access to clean skies without light pollution. The results can be as good as with a telescope you will see nebulas, zillions of stars, etc.


Luigi

[funkysandman]

sounds cool, Luigis
I'm guessing the stacking software re-aligns the stars?
I'm googling intervalometer remote...

[skipper34]

You can produce fairly amazing pictures without any special equipment using Stacking.

The recipe is:

- Get a very solid tripod
- [optional] Get one intervalometer remote from ebay (they are around $30)
- Take 40/50 pictures of some area of the sky at ISO1600, a luminous aperture like F4 and the longest shutter speed you can afford without producing star trails. (The intervalometer is handy for this but you can click click your way to the 50 pics)
- Stack all the pictures using DeepSkyStacker (free software)
- Voila!

If your camera has Liveview is great for focusing.

The key is to have access to clean skies without light pollution. The results can be as good as with a telescope you will see nebulas, zillions of stars, etc.


Luigi

To a point, yes. Without a EQ mount with a clockdrive, you are confined to taking widefield shots with a normal or wide angle lens, or with a medium telephoto up to about 200mm. If you have no way to counteract the movement of the earth, your exposures are going to be limited with the telephoto before stars start to trail. Depends on the focal length of the lens. A 135mm lens will allow only about 10 seconds before trailing becomes apparent. With a wide lens, say about 24mm, you have about 30 seconds before trailing is evident. Stacking exposures works best when the camera can be guided up to about 1 minute. This is not to say that experimentation can be ruled out. My experience is that a fixed camera on a tripod is very limiting when exposing the night sky.

[luigis]

Yes, deepskystacker does the aligning, you can help it a little moving the camera by hand if you have some star or feature you can use to guide you.

An example of the remote can be:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Timer-Remote-C1-for-Canon-EOS-400D-350D-300D-XTI-XT-R8A_W0QQitemZ230329077389QQcmdZViewItemQQptZCamera _Camcorder_Remotes?hash=item230329077389&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A13 18|301%3A0|293%3A1|294%3A50

One nice thing about that inexpensive remote is that you can setup the camera on the tripod, program the remote and leave. For example you can program it to take 50 shots of 16 seconds exposure starting 4 hours after you press the "start" button. It is also nice to "hunt" lightning during a storm.
The only thing is to remember to properly focus and know where to point the camera and set it up in bulb mode ISO1600 and the proper aperture.


Luigi