Another "WTF do I buy" thread.

Hey,

I have been having a snap or two at some astro as a bit of fun and my own general interest. Partly as I teach science and also becuase I need a break from my paid photography work sometimes!

I have been using my 5D mk III and a couple of lenses such as the sigma 24mm f1.8 and the 17-40mm f4 canon (which sucks balls for distortion at 17mm btw!) for some "wide field" shots.

One problem is I do live in a fairly light polluted area but will hopefully be travelling a couple of hours in the holidays to a more dark sky friendly area.

My real question is are my choices in potential equipment good?

1) Am I being sensible in going for an HEQ5 PRO mount?
2) A cheap ish scope to begin with. I was thinking a Sky-Watcher Startravel-102 refractor scope to begin with.

My reason for HEQ5 mount is I heard it is good value for money and has the beefiness to hold an astroimaging set up. The choice of scope was a refractor as it is more user friendly and can still produce nice images of brighter and closer galaxies (like Andromeda). If I ever upgraded, it supposedly makes a very nice portable scope or tracking scope thingy.

A second question would be where do I find out about "computer assisted tracking". I will be using my laptop in the field and if I can get a cheap CCD pannel or whatever for it to improve my images, I would be more than happy to splash 1-£200 on that!

Thanks for any help!

My second ever attempt at it here.
Just to get an idea of the light pollution of my local spot (1 hour drive away) here is a frame from camera and a stack:

Single frame: ISO 6400 F7.1 25s 17mm

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …80072515@N06/10​729753586/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …80072515@N06/10​680799206/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …80072515@N06/10​680156804/

the heq5 is fine for a starter mount. Cheack into getting an autoguider package so you can do guided long exposures with your laptop. EQMOD is freeware made for synta mounts, such as your eq5, whihc is excellent, it has a ton of different side programs which allow you do do amazing things. If you want to get a refractor for imaging I would say your first step should be making a triplet mandatory. The doublets all get some degree of chromatic aberrations, always go with the triplets. Also most refractors need a field flattener so count on adding $150-$300 to the cost of a scope off the rip if you want to do AP. Other than that maybe look into sending off your camera to get it modded for full specturm, hyper cams and mods is really cheap. In regards to your light pollution issue, you could get a light pollution filter for your camera but exposures will be tough until you get it modded for full spectrum in the red Ha regions so exposures will take alot longer. Also, I do not use a full frame dslr but as I understand a 3" focuser or larger is required to avoid vignetting on large sensor cameras such as the 5d's. Ok I looked up the 102 star travel and there is no way that focuser would hold a 5D3. If I remember correctly, Borg makes a specific line of refractors designed for full frames, but then again you could probably upgrade any triplet focuser to a larger diameter 3 or 4" drawtube and flattener combo.

If you are venturing into AP, Wes has given excellent suggestions. The HEQ5 will be an excellent mount. My Celestron AVX mount with the AT 65EDQ is the most often used combo for me. It is light, relatively inexpensive (by AP setup standards) and provides nice widefield images. I can't recall what the European equivalent of the AT65EDQ is but there is one (Perhaps TS makes one). It sells for about 600 dollars here in the US, has a useful focal length of 420mm, and has a built in field flattener.

Drop your ISO to 800. Open your aperture ALL THE WAY. If you have f2.8, use it. Don't worry about DOF, your subject is at infinity so there is no DOF.

Why all the purple and blue puke? Use a known black point for white balance and have a look around on the net for the common colours for comparison. Stretch you r histogram, levels and curves in several small iterations, rather than a single bold adjustment.

Are you shooting in RAW?

It was my first go at it and the real problem I found editing them was the curves. A minor curve adjustment seemed to throw the colours way off...so I pretty much just gave up.

The editing side seems to be a real pain in the arse full stop. As far as setting black point...just click on parts of space randomly till you hit something that should have been black ?

Oh and it is vastly different to my usual paid photography (being events and nightlife) so I dont really have any specific equipment for the job...but still was quite impressed what I could get being in the centre of the UK and with just my usual lenses, a tripod and 5D to be honest.

Any particular help on settings such as using ISO 800 would be great...

I would have thought ISO 800 would give very low relative exposure time? Would I need to capture say 4x the number of images?

Here mate, I wrote this for folks like yourself starting out in astrophotography. You might like to read the widefield part.