Quote:
Originally Posted by jahnpahwa
Thank you, guys!
That's a great primer on guiding, and good to hear about the tighter weight constraints with astrophotography.
I'd love to say "stuff it, I'll just grab the EQ6R" but even for someone who tends to dive in and give myself a chance to love a hobby by getting good intro gear, that seems a lot! That said, I wonder if the kids would have great visual moments with a 6"...
I've (we've) had a LOT of time on my hands, so yeah, I've had a look at darkness maps and see that my Bortle is class 5 here in western ACT, but happy to see that I can access dark skies easily.
Ah, its the same old discussion/conundrum! Trade-offs everywhere I turn 
I wonder if a suitable (thrifty) starting answer would be to keep the rig simple .... 8.75kg OTA, supplied finder scope (couple of hundred grams?), no guiding gear, 500g SLR and see how I go getting good polar alignment, stack 30-45sec exposures... Is this pie in the sky thinking? |
JP, not pie in the sky thinking at all. You can get great photos without guiding. Put the effort into getting good polar alignment, it is always a skill that comes in handy. You may find reading up on "Drift Alignment" could be useful. When you get to the point of taking exposures, you can use simple Interval Metres that plug into your camera to space and time each exposure properly, or use software like Backyard EOS (For Canons), or Backyard Nikon, which run on laptops and allow you to plan a whole evening of shooting.
Once you have those exposures, you will need to stack them to build signal, so do some reading about Deep Sky Stacked ( aka DSS), which is another laptop app that will stack and align your exposures. There are other more complicated tools but most folks start out with the ones mentioned.