Want to get a telescope, recommendations?

I'm hoping to pick up a telescope soon. What would be a good one to use for astrophotography? I'd like to spend under $500.

Well that depends on what you want to do. If you want star trail you just need a tripod. To get long exposure of planets or the milky way you need a equatorial mount that is polar aligned. If toy want to. Use the scope for a lens you need adapters for your camera. I would suggest you look at astronomy web sites. Also look at meade or Orion web sites. Good luck

Don

Yes, a very vague question to be honest, but if you don't have the experience then you don't know I guess.

Relatively short focal lengths are fine for deep space imaging. Many 60mm to 80mm (around f/5) Apochromatic Refractors would be less than $500, but for deep space imaging you need a decent tracking mount, and these can be two to ten times the price of the telescope!!

My first decent scope was a 1200mm Achromatic Refractor, which was about $200, and it was nice for shooting the moon and planets, but too slow and narror a field of view to shoot good deep space objects. Plus it still needed a tracking mount.

If you want to get started and that's your definite limit, then I think you could probably get a fairly decent secondhand rig. Something like an EQ5 (without GOTO) and a 70mm Apo. Budget in for some eyepieces, camera adapters, power, maybe some filters.

How much would a decent one with a tracking mount cost?

Get a Celestron ASGt5, for about 600 shipped. Get a Orion dove tail for it ($15) to mount your camera on it and lens. That 70-200 would be a really good start and get got 6-8min exposures with it. Next step up in mounts is $13-1500 level.

Later you can add gear on it. Lighter then better, Small APO refractors start @ $400 and work up to $6k. But then you need bigger mounts. Mount is the most important part of AP. 50% mount, 25% camera and 25% lens/telescope.

Look on the used market to save a bit more bucks.

here's my advice, for what it's worth

First invest in a serious mount (at the very least an EQ3-2)
Then buy the instrument

I went step by step and bought a cheap birding thingie, then an EQ 1, then the 3-2, then the GOTO kit, then the NEQ5 GOTO. I somehow managed to sell the eq1, but now I'm stuck with the 3-2. The mount is way more imprtant than the instrument.

For the actual telescope - you basically have two kinds of astrophotography: deep sky (relatively wide angle) and planetary (focal lengths of over 1m). The longer the focal length, the more critical the mount as apparent movement is highly exacerbated by long focals.

Take into account that the larger deep sky objects (Andromeda, the Pleiades, Orion nebula) are nice and visible already at 400mm focals. You need about 1m focal for the rest (Crab nebula, etc). This is on an APS-C sensor.

Invest in high quality barlow lenses (up to 5x) for prime focus planetary.

PM if you need more specific info.

I was trying to find prices on mounts like the EQ3-2, 4, 5, and 6 but I can't seem to find anyone in the states that sell them online. Where can you go for pricing, I'm curious what these things cost.

I was thinking about setting something up myself to start taking some photos of stars and planets, no specific goal I just wanted to try it out.

What type of pricing can you expect to get a good setup for a 7D.

Go to OPT or telescopes Or just to a google search and see what you can find.

Bolter303 wrote in post #11385639
Go to OPT or telescopes Or just to a google search and see what you can find.

Thanks, I was googling but I couldn't find anything but one UK supplier.
I searched for EQ3, 4, 5, and 6.

That mount you listed second, Orion AstroView Equatorial Telescope Mount.

What can you expect from that, is that good, or just really entry level? What type of telescope would be good to start with that is better than entry level but not super expensive. What would I need to hook up a 7D?

As a general rule. The mount is very important. A good EQ mount is what you want to start with. You need to have a GOTO system on it as well. That way you can polar align the mount and use the GOTO to enter where you want to go. For example. I had a Meade 10" LXD75 SN-10 This type of mount is a German Equatorial Mount. You set the mount up looking at the north star, using the polar illuminated viewfinder. This gets the scope started. Than using the Meade AutoStar GOTO system the scope will use your location (lat, Long) and look to a bright star by its self. When it stops it ask you to look in the scope and see if the star is centered. It will do this two or three times and each time you can manually adjust the scope to center the star. Once you "sync" on these stars the scope will learn its location. For the rest of the night the scope will track what ever you want it to. You can just type in go to M13 and it will go there and beep when it is done. You can than set up you camera on top and start taking long exposures and not have any star trails.

This mount is one that will last you a long time. You can start with a 6" scope and upgrade later. Look around your local area for an Astronomy Club or Star Party. You can go and see different scopes and mounts and talk to people what they like or not.

I know this is a lot but you need to ask yourself. Am I looking to get into astronomy and than maybe astrophotography or do I just want to take pictures of the night sky, and such.

The meade site has some links to different sites. Good Luck

Bolter303 wrote in post #11389733
As a general rule. The mount is very important. A good EQ mount is what you want to start with. You need to have a GOTO system on it as well. That way you can polar align the mount and use the GOTO to enter where you want to go. For example. I had a Meade 10" LXD75 SN-10 This type of mount is a German Equatorial Mount. You set the mount up looking at the north star, using the polar illuminated viewfinder. This gets the scope started. Than using the Meade AutoStar GOTO system the scope will use your location (lat, Long) and look to a bright star by its self. When it stops it ask you to look in the scope and see if the star is centered. It will do this two or three times and each time you can manually adjust the scope to center the star. Once you "sync" on these stars the scope will learn its location. For the rest of the night the scope will track what ever you want it to. You can just type in go to M13 and it will go there and beep when it is done. You can than set up you camera on top and start taking long exposures and not have any star trails.

This mount is one that will last you a long time. You can start with a 6" scope and upgrade later. Look around your local area for an Astronomy Club or Star Party. You can go and see different scopes and mounts and talk to people what they like or not.

I know this is a lot but you need to ask yourself. Am I looking to get into astronomy and than maybe astrophotography or do I just want to take pictures of the night sky, and such.

The meade site has some links to different sites. Good Luck

Is that Meade system you referenced for $1,400 include the telescope or is it just a mount? Does it include the electronics? How much would it cost to build a system based off that and from 1 (Fisher Price) - 10 (NASA) where would it put me in terms of quality. Will it get me a good picture of Juniper? How far out can I see surface detail?

I'm really not sure what I want to do, right now I am heavily into photography but 99.9% of my images are my 3 year old son, what we are doing, and family. I saw a $50 telescope on Amazon I thought about getting him and thought to myself it would be cool to take pictures of stars and planets, at least initially.

If that kit you mentioned had most everything I need, I could probably swing the price, I wanted to stay under $1,000 but I also would rather have something nice and can sell it later if I don't stick with it.

I will check to see if there is any local clubs or meetings on this, I tried a few local photography clubs in general in the past and was turned off as they were very boring and somewhat poorly managed.

What can be taken with a 70-200 f/4 IS L & decent Manfrotto tripod? I saw it mentioned you can star gaze with that, but I haven't tried.

Thanks for all the feedback, much appreciated.

I just got off the phone with Meade, they explained to me a bit what the LXD75 is and the quality relative to the entry level system like the DS2000. He also mentioned it included everything but the adapters.

What would I be looking at to mount a Canon 7D to the LXD75 or a DS200 if decided to start of cheap?

I found the Canon EOS Mount on their site for $15, I wasn't sure about the Meade camera mount, I saw one for eye piece, but I assume that isn't as good as whatever other option there maybe as the eye piece seems so small.

Well it was because of my son that I got into astronomy. One day he pointed to a start and asked what was that and I had no clue. We started with a star chart, books and such until we could learn the constellations. For there we got a 6" small scope and I learned that if it is something you are going to get into it is cheaper to do it right from the start. We could see the moon and some small stuff but other that not much. I than went to the LDX75 for a while and than traded it into Scope City for the Meade LX200 12". From there I added the wedge, off axis guiders, camera mounts, and on and on. It got to the point that as I got older I could no longer lift the scope and tri-pod and it was not getting used. I than sold it all off and got my cameras. I still love to go out at night and look at the stars. Now that I know what and where I am looking.

Check with Scope City, Astromart or search used scopes on google. I sold my back to Scope city at a loss. But someone got a really nice set up for a good price. The Orion ED-80 or ED-100 are good scopes to look at the moon, saturn and Jupiter as well as other stuff. You can see M-42 (in orion) as other deep sky stuff. Most people use it as a second scope ontop of the large scope as a of axis guider. When you do deep sky astrophotography you need to be exact and a guider lets you put a cross-hair on a star and guide the scopes tracking so that you have a sharp image.

I just got this catalog from orion. Here is a Link. Look through all of this it will help. But take a look at page 44 and you will see a few setups. The top is just the camera on a mount. You can get a good mount with GOTO for a few dollars more. THan as you son gets older you can add a scope to mount on top. You might find one used later to add. The bottom pic shows prime focus. Attaching the camera to the scope with a t-mount adapter, and shooting at prime focus. The ED80T becomes a lens. You can also use at daytime to shoot birds or wildlife. That one is a good mount to start with. Take a look and fire back any questions.

How much would just a mount with goto cost? And would I be able to mount the camera right to it? That would be enough to get me started if I could.

Not sure look at the catalog link and give them a call I am sure they can help you.