Photography and Astronomy help required..

sunny2004

Ok, I know this is not well thought out, but as a professional photographer I have come to learn that people ned to start somewhere...

So, I am looking for peoples experiences or advice so I can get into astronomical photography..

My experience, well I have a meade telescope I bought a while ago, but I dont want to use it and am starting from scratch..

I want to purchase a motorised rig that will allow me to track subject and want to start by spending around €500...

If you are reading this and thinking, he really doesnt know what he is talking about, you would be right thats why I am asking here...

Thanks...

jfSDAS

Hi,

Welcome to the hobby and specifically the photography angle. It's a vast area to get up to speed on but very rewarding.

I'm just typing this on my phone but will try post more info over the weekend.

You've probably got a good headstart with some excellent lenses and cameras. If you don't mind, could you post up what model camera you might use for imaging?

Two excellent sites to start reading are http://www.astropix.com run by Jerry Lodriguss, and to Google "Gary Honis", who does filter mods on cameras -- removing the IR blocking filter improves the red-sensitivity of DSLRs for deep-sky photography as details of nebulae, mostly red spectrum-line hydrogen, will be recorded better. Don't bother with getting the camera modded though until you really get into astrophotography.

Also, check out the DSLR forum on http://www.cloudynights.com for tons of advice/ideas.

A good motorised equatorial mount will enable time-exposures to be taken. Then there are the dedicated platforms such as the Astrotrac, Vixen Polarie, Takahashi Tegul, and a handful of others.

I bought an Astrotrac in June but have not used it yet due to inclement weather. My DSLR is a Canon 550D unmodded. The beauty of the Astrotrac is portability whereas a motorised telescope mount is not as easily carried if travelling. Another possibilty is to build a Barn-Door mount which can give nice results with time exposures.

That said, a number of subjects don't need any tracking such as conjunctions, the Moon, star trails, aurora, constellation shots (ISO 1600 & 30 secs will pick up a lot of detail from a dark site), and meteors.

Software is another area too with essentials ibncluding Deep Sky Stacker and BackyardEOS.

Hope the above helps and feel free to post up any follow up questions.

John

sunny2004

John,
Firstly you are one hell of a man to post that from an iPhone I take my hat off to you.....

I get the motorised mount importance..
Regarding equipment (photographically) I use exclusively nikon, BUT I intend using a Sigma DSLR as the filter is easily removed even by the faint hearted..

So, my intention is to look into the links, and start somewhere with as little fuss as possible, shoot the moon which I can do with my 300mm but shoot it closer, then with the telescope and hopefully not to much fuss, shoot saturn and its rings..............

So start small then get into other things, I dont want it as a FULL time thing, just something I have alwas wanted to do, but I do want to TRY and do it right....

I also have an urge to shoot the sun... but thats another story for now...

Off the top of your head, do you think I can get started within a budget of say €500 ???


Thanks again, and feel free to congradulate me for typing this on a full sized keyboard

ThatDrGuy

Planetary photography is a bit different. Best results seem to come from modded webcams but you can use the record function on dslrs. Astrophotography is a giant money pit. A half decent equatorial set up will set you 500 and more just for the mount. You could start off with buying a simple ccd imager like celestron neximage and use it with your meade to capture the lunar craters, rings of saturn etc. You can manually track those and get fairly ok results. Then if freezing your backside off doesnt dissuade you, get a simple equatorial tracker set up.

sunny2004

The meade is crap, based on the images i could see through it with my eye, I am not interested in using it further...

I want something I can build on, So I suppose I need to re-evaluate "upwards" my budget on this.... But I get the money pit and wish to avoid this at all costs,, no pun intended

Popoutman

Having the cameras and lenses, you can get fantastic images with all of the focal length ranges from 20 through 300, depending on the target you are shooting for.
Do you have an APC or full-frame sensor?

My recommendation is that you get a tracking mount such as the Astrotrac, as it's likely that you already have a decent quality tripod and head to mount the Astrotrac on, and another quality head to point the camera. You can spend a lot of time doing only this kind of photo and getting beautiful photos, without using a telescope. Using a CLS filter to help remove any light pollution from the photos would be a good idea as well. I use a clip-in CLS on my Canon, and it works well. If you have a properly dark site, you may reach exposure times of 20 minutes without the skyfog saturating the shots. In a typical Irish suburban backyard, a quality f/1.2 lens stopped down to f/1.8 (to improve the edge sharpness and star images) should give a useful image at 2 minutes, but 3 minutes will likely have too much fog. Tracking and using an intervalometer to take e.g. 30 2 minute shots of the same area would be stackable in programs like DeepSkyStacker or IRIS to give clean deep shots with nice star images and you'd get a lot of deep sky items located in it too.

Good moon shots can be done with relatively small telescopes, if you are happy with getting the whole moon in frame without getting great detail on the individual features.

To get decent planet shots without a frustrating amount of trial and error, you're looking at well north of €500 for a decent mount second hand, and you'd need an 8" or larger scope to have a chance of getting quality images regularly (such as an 8" SCT with a 2x barlow on it, or a quality 8" newtonian with a 4x or 5x barlow). I'm not familiar with the Nikons as planetary video cameras, but I do know that the 500d and newer can give a 1:1 pixel recorded on the video (no interpolating). Either that type of thing or a good planetary camera such as a DMK or a Flea would be needed to get the sensitivity needed to get enough signal at a fast enough framerate, to get enough quality frames to stack in programs like Avistack2 or Registax, to give nice images.

Some people that take deep sky photos, could spend an evening taking the raw images with the flats and the dark frames - all important even with a quality DSLR - and then spending a few weeks getting the images processed adequately. A quick and dirty process would be maybe a few hours work to get a pleasing image, but it would reward the spending of time on it.

As has been said above, it's a money pit if you get started, and the cost/benefit is pretty poor in this country with our climate. If you were regularly getting to e.g. the south of France or the Canaries, then you'd be in a better position to take advantage of clear dark skies free from cloud and haze. It can also be an exercise in patience, waiting for the subimages to record, and then having to wait until the post-processing to see anything useful. Having said that, with a good tracking mount you'll get pretty pictures fairly quickly with only a little bit of waiting.

sunny2004

Firstly thank you,,,
I need to think about this further, which is what I was hoping for, someone to focus my thought on the subject...

I will return to reply with my thought in detail...

CHEERS !!!!!!

dmcdona

ThatDrGuy wrote: »

Astrophotography is a giant money pit. A half decent equatorial set up will set you 500 and more just for the mount.

I wish it were that cheap! For a good telescope astrophotography setup, you can add a nought onto the end of that. For my own system, my imager alone cost 30 times that.

Money pit doesn't quite cut it. Mariana trench more like... :eek:

Sunny 2004 (?) - bear in mind that a view through a telecope with your eyes really can't compare with a (longish) exposure using an imager. The Meade scopes in general are reasonble scopes - many imagers use them with very good results.

In fact, a good few years back, I used one of the cheap 70mm refractors (from Lidl) to take some images and for the price, the result was excellent. Bear in mind that astronomy in general and astrophotography in particular is a huge field and you can specialise to the nth degree. And that of course exacts a price. A bit like your cameras. You can grab a cheap digital camera from anywhere nowadays but if you want 'professional' result, its easy enough to drop 10 or 20 grand on body and lens.

All the other folks here have given good advice - especially regarding climate. However, temper that with the fact that the the last 3 or 4 years have been poor in comparsion to the past. Whether its a transient poorness, I'm not sure. Still, when we do get a clear calm night, you can get spectacular results. Unfortuantely, that usually equates to December and about -5 or -10 degrees.

There are many folks hanging out on irishastronomy.org (free registration) who pretty much cover all aspects of astrophotograpghy - DSLR, webcam, planetary, solar, widefield deepsky, narrow field deep sky and science. The weatlh of ecperience there is huge and most folks are mor than happy to help and more importantly, admit to their mistakes (in fairness, its a very complex field) and help you avoid wasting time, effort and money.

Good luck!
Dave

sunny2004

Ok, again thank you for the time guys....

Regarding the Meade I have, well it was in fact also bought in ~ALdi...

While I managed to use it to view the rings of saturn the image was soft, very soft..... Maybe I was not using it right, but I could not from my experience consider it for imaging....


So this will involve either a total rethink or a BANK JOB

dmcdona

The visual perfromance of the Meade will be able to be tweaked. They are good scopes. Softness may have collimation or crap eyepieces (which would be repalced by yourr imager anyhow). If the mount it came with is motorised, you then have tracking. All that remains is to attach an imager.

If the mount is a fork mount, that may cause problems with a large imager. A DSLR could possibly be too heavy/too big. BUT, there's the possibility the DSLR may be piggybacked.

For dipping the toe in the water, there is the possibility you could get away with zero budget. At the other end of the scale, yes, a bank job could possibly do it. Do you need a driver? 50/50 split.

Register on irishastronomy.org - many folks there have far more experience than I in the areas you're considering. Some may even loan you the gear or you could get some nice used kit for a good price.

sunny2004

If that meade scope is in any way good, then I really need to rethink this..
I think I need to get out in a field with a load of grown men haha and see the options working....

Will look into astromony ireland and try moving this forward...

BIG THANK YOU !! I appreciate ALL the info and time !!

dmcdona

sunny2004 wrote: »

Will look into astromony ireland and try moving this forward...

I don't think Astronomy Ireland have a forum. The place to go is www.irishastronmy.org (Irish Federation of Astronomical Societies). Registration and use of the forums is free. There's also plenty of folks from nationwide clubs/societies who would be more than happy to let you know when they next meet - and you can cavort with all the lovely ladies and gentlemen as long as you like :-)

Definitely do not give up on the Meade just yet. In fact, if you find a club near you and take the scope to them, someone is bound to know if it will do what you want it to do and if its a bit out of whack, there's bound to be someone that can fix it or someone who knows someone...

Good luck and one final word of advice re astrophotography - perseverance. It will pay off in the end.

Cheers
Dave

Kersh

Which Meade is it that you have?

jfSDAS

Lots of great advice from everyone and there's little I can add except to second Dave's recommendation that perseverance pays off.

An angle worth trying is to see what is possible with the equipment you currently have. The contributors to The World At Night ( http://www.twanight.org/newTWAN/index.asp ) showcase the way the beauty of the sky can be captured with imagination and basic equipment. Have a look at the Cosmic Motions section of TWAN's site too -- the motion of Mars clip for example was captured by photographing the same region of sky over a few months but when the images were combined it shows the retrograde motion of Mars in the night sky (a phenomenon which defied a simple explanation for centuries).

An exhibition worth attending will be that by Irish astrophotographer Tom O'Donoghue which will be hosted in Dublin from September 6th to 12th. Tom has captured incredible images of the night sky and you can view more of his work, as well as details of the exhibition, at http://www.astrophotography.ie/default.htm

Also, as Dave said, a local club will be able to offer tons of advice about astrophotography as there will be members who have "been there, done that" in the field (literally!) A number of people often travel to Wicklow during dark-of-the-Moon periods to pursue observing and astrophotography projects. Details are often listed in advance on www.irishastronomy.org

Dave, btw, has captured beautiful images of the night sky himself (see http://www.astroshack.net/ ) and also discovered the first asteroid to be found from Ireland in 160 years as well as having his own named asteroid!

Clear skies!

John