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Old 04-01-2024, 09:40 AM
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OzEclipse (Joe Cali)
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Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: Young Hilltops LGA, Australia
Posts: 1,186
Hi Benji,
Others have already given you good advice. The telescope is well out of focus. Prime focus photography is the most testing form of astrophotography and not a great place to start.

Focussing on the Moon is an easy way to verify that you can focus but then you definitely don't want to be capturing with the Moon up. You can use live view on a bright star. Make sure you set live view to maximum magnification.

All geared drives suffer from a "wobble" called periodic error. Errors in the machining of the threaded worm that drives the gear wheel make the mount speed up then slow down. The average speed is correct but the stars appear as elongated ovals. As others have mentioned, you will struggle to use that mount with that telescope for prime focus photography. Instead, I recommend that you remove the telescope tube, reduce the counterweight and simply place the DSLR with a wide angle, standard or short telephoto lens. Reducing the payload will make the mount much more stable. Use just one of the counterweights. Use the counterweight combination that balances the camera/lens with the counterweight extended to a minimum distance from the axis. ie don't have the counterweight bouncing on the end of the counterweight shaft.

You have considerable light pollution. This lighter weight combination will be easier to transport out of the city to darker skies. If you join the Astronomical Society of Victoria (ASV), they have a dark sky site somewhere near Mansfield. That might be an option if you don't have an out of town location.

I have attached some example pictures taken with 14mm, 50mm, 135mm and 300mm lenses using small mounts or simple tracking methods. Assuming you already have some camera lenses, you can have a lot of fun doing this, learn a lot in the process, without spending any extra money on a better mount or any other gear. Astrotracer is a Pentax function where the camera's image stabiliser moves the sensor to compensate for the movement of the night sky. Don't worry about the tracking method, the image is just an example of what you can do with a DSLR camera and short lenses.

Good luck

Joe
Attached Thumbnails
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