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Hi Liz
It is almost impossible to “dabble” in astro photography without incurring cost and some frustration – welcome to the long suffering club!
Cameras such as the ToUcam and DMK excel at high resolution Lunar and Planetary imaging because they capture 10’s of frames per second. Software can then “grade” those frames and only stack the best, giving some quite extraordinary results for a relatively low cost start up.
However, when we move onto long exposure deep sky imaging (Deep Sky Objects or DSO’s) then costs, demands on equipment, set up complexity, time and operator patience begin to increase, sometimes exponentially!
If we mount a DSLR with a typical kit lens set to say 50mm focal length on a polar aligned telescope that has an RA motor for tracking, then you can take some nice wide field images but again, stacking these will make them look richer as it minimises the noise and strengthens the signal. You may spend as much time processing your image sets as you did in acquiring the data!
As soon as you fit a DSLR or dedicated astro CCD camera to the focuser a telescope (prime focus), then you place great demands on the entire imaging system. This includes but is not limited to items such as the quality of the ‘scope, collimation, accurate polar alignment, low periodic error in the mount, good tracking or better still, auto guiding, etc. This makes the game more expensive and also potentially more “frustrating” especially if you have a portable set up and need to assemble, align, focus, calibrate, test, etc. the set up each session, then tear it down before going to bed, or work!
However, if this is your chosen path, you will be well rewarded with some amazing results and there has never been a better time in terms of equipment availability, albeit at a price! You can sometimes “cut corners” or do things on the cheap, but this usually increases non-productive set up, fault finding, system tuning time versus quality imaging time.
Cheers
Dennis
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