Iâve heard AP compared to a mental illness. And after having been infected
with it for the past two years, I have to agree with the analogy. It will teach
you patience, perseverance, and humility. If you stick to it. You want be
getting a lot of sleep once youâre hooked either. Not from spending your time
doing AP but lying awake all night trying to figure out what exciting way
things went wrong this time!
Most of AP is managing your expectations. Youâre not going to be able to
produce Hubble quality images. Youâre not even going to match Bernardâs
level without âmuch moneyâ. And skill! Money is an enabler in this
âhobbyâ but it still requires skill.
So what kind of images are you hoping to take? Planetary/solar imaging is
different than wide field which is different from deep space objects. Each
domain has its attractions and headaches.
Unless you want to do wide field landscape panoramas, you will need some kind
of mount. Most likely, youâll want some kind of equatorial mount that can
track across the sky at the same rate as the apparent motion of the stars. That
allows you to take longer duration images. I disagree with the recommendation
that you need a Astro Physics or Paramount mount to start with. Sure, theyâre
really nice but laying out $5-15 THOUSAND before you know if you really want to
do this long term is risky, in my opinion. (Unless your idea of ânot much
moneyâ is a lot different than mine!)
Unless youâre going to put a big OTA (> 14-17â) on it soon, you can get by
with a much more moderately priced mount such as a iOptron CEM-60 (not the -EC
version!), a Celestron CGX (maybe a CGXL is you think youâre going to put a
big Newtonian on it soon), or a Sky Watcher HEQ-6R. From what Iâve read and
my own experience, all of these will do well for a serious beginner. (I bought
the CEM-60 a year ago and they sent me the CEM-60EC version by mistake. Itâs
taken a while to get that thing under control. It would have been easier with
the base CEM-60 but Iâm reasonably happy with what I ended up with.) If
youâre tempted by the less expensive Celestron AVX, we should talk first so
you know what to expect.
I started out using my Canon (SL1) but quickly ran into heat issues. I started
out in June and by the first of August, I was ready to by a dedicated AP camera
with built in cooling. The sensor on my Canon was exceeding 115 degrees and all
I was getting was noise. A cooled sensor is really handy in Arizona!! If you
decide to go the DSLR route, some people are recommending some of the newer
Nikons (Heresy!) as having a better sensor than the Canons. As a life long
Canon user, I didnât pay attention to what models they were referring to. I
went with a ZWO ASI1600mm Pro, which is popular with a certain set of imagers.
Itâs monochrome (B&W) so I use narrow band filters in a EFW (electronic
filter wheel) to with them out under SW control so I can get a full color image
(or false color with HSO (hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur wavelengths, great for
gaudy nebulas!) by combining them back together in post processing.
If you havenât yet, you might want to hang out on Cloudy Nightâs beginning
imaging forum to learn from other peopleâs mistakes. You might also want to
check out Trevorâs AstroBackyard website and YouTube channel. He recently had
a video on his HEQ-5, SpaceCat 51, and Canon right that heâs using for some
of his wide field work this summer.
https://www.cloudynights.com/forum/80-beginning-and-intermediate-imaging/ ;
<https://www.cloudynights.com/forum/80-beginning-and-intermediate-imaging/>
https://astrobackyard.com/ ;<https://astrobackyard.com/>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv05lba4ido&tg4s ;
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv05lba4ido&tg4s>
Oh! And all of this stuff starts adding up, weight wise! So youâll need an
RV/camper for hauling of of it out into the boonies for the two or three star
parties each year! :-)
Mike McDonald
mikemac@xxxxxxxxxxx
On Apr 25, 2020, at 11:55 PM, Chase Douglas Anderson <mysporthoops@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Hey everyone,
I would like to get into astrophotography. I know very little about this
field and also do not have much money. Any ideas on how to start some basic
telescope photography?
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