Astrophotography for beginners

[Stosh]

Go to www.telescope.com.

Find what fits your budget.

With telescopes, the name of the game is aperture. For quality deep sky work, try to stay above 12 inches of aperture.

I'm sorry, but this is extremely misleading, if not completely wrong. If you're doing astrophotography, 3"-5" of aperture is what most people are using because it's affordable. To take pictures through anything as large as you mentioned requires serious professional equipment. It's analogous to somebody asking advice about buying their very first camera, something that fits in their pocket and takes everything automatically, then recommending a Hassy medium format digital.

I would call this serious deep sky work and these pictures were all taken with a 3" diameter telescope:
TV 76
There are many manufacturers of small refractors and many, many examples of quality work with that equipment.

 

[Stosh]

did you stack for the milky way one? or was that just a single shot? and Excellent photos!!! :thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:

I think this was a stack of only 2 shots, but it's been a while.
Thank you!

 

[pgriz]

<snip>
I would call this serious deep sky work and these pictures were all taken with a 3" diameter telescope:
TV 76
There are many manufacturers of small refractors and many, many examples of quality work with that equipment.

Stosh, it may be a 3" refractor, but that's a seriously heavy-duty equatorial mount that supporting the telescope/camera. You can't get the photos that you've linked to without the full system - refractor, mount, tracking gear, clock drive, etc. The camera he's using is a SBIG dedicated astrophotography camera, complete with appropriate filters. I've looked at the stuff on that web site, and he's a serious hardcore astrophotographer. There's no way a T1i hooked up to a 3" refractor (even if it's the same one as in the picture) will give the kind of results this individual has obtained.

I think what you're showing us with your photos is that it is possible to get very nice shots with regular camera gear, WITHOUT getting into the expense of buying astronomy gear, as long as you make intelligent exposure decisions AND have a sufficiently dark sky. The next step up would be to set up a piggyback system on a decent equatorial mount. This would allow manual tracking to prevent star-trails, but the quality of the resulting image will depend greatly on the stability of the mount and on the precision in tracking.

 

[Stosh]

Stosh, it may be a 3" refractor, but that's a seriously heavy-duty equatorial mount that supporting the telescope/camera. You can't get the photos that you've linked to without the full system - refractor, mount, tracking gear, clock drive, etc. The camera he's using is a SBIG dedicated astrophotography camera, complete with appropriate filters. I've looked at the stuff on that web site, and he's a serious hardcore astrophotographer. There's no way a T1i hooked up to a 3" refractor (even if it's the same one as in the picture) will give the kind of results this individual has obtained.

I think what you're showing us with your photos is that it is possible to get very nice shots with regular camera gear, WITHOUT getting into the expense of buying astronomy gear, as long as you make intelligent exposure decisions AND have a sufficiently dark sky. The next step up would be to set up a piggyback system on a decent equatorial mount. This would allow manual tracking to prevent star-trails, but the quality of the resulting image will depend greatly on the stability of the mount and on the precision in tracking.

You are 100% correct. I agree with everything you said and that's the direction I was going with my original post. My only point was that you don't need anywhere close to 12" of aperture to do quality work. As a matter of fact, the larger your aperture, the more difficult and expensive it is to mount. The smaller apertures (and camera lenses) are much more manageable. And of course the steadier you hold your setup, especially on a motorized mount, the deeper you can expose.

 

[stepollard1]

Hiya guys,
I would like to be able to do this kind of stuff, would it be possible from the kit I have
D3000
Tripod
Nikon 55-200mm f/4-5.6

Or is it better off waiting until I upgrade my set up ?

 

[pgriz]

Hiya guys,
I would like to be able to do this kind of stuff, would it be possible from the kit I have
D3000
Tripod
Nikon 55-200mm f/4-5.6

Or is it better off waiting until I upgrade my set up ?

Don't wait. Do it. Try your lens at the low end ( around 55mm), set your aperture to wide open (f/4), try an ISO around 800 to start, and try an exposure of 15 seconds or so. Depending on the results, adjust up or down. Of course, on a tripod, and either with a 2-second delay, or a remote trigger to minimize camera shake. But as Stosh already noted, the darker the sky, the better the contrast and the result.

 

[stepollard1]

will give it a go thanks. didnt think that being at the 55mm end would be able to catch much detail.