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Old 29-09-2007, 10:20 AM
nimsie
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Newbie with a Skywatcher sw500

I'm very new to this sight but I used it in my decission to buy the SW500.
This was a present for the wife which I gave her last night. I showed her some images the scopes capable of, and now she wants the gear to take photos.

My question is;
- can I connect my DSLR camera (sony 828) 58mm lens
- what accessories will i need (do the cameras connect to the scope or do they need there own stands.
- any other advice would be helpful.

Thank you
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  #2  
Old 29-09-2007, 04:27 PM
iceman's Avatar
iceman (Mike)
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Hi there and to IceInSpace!

Is it on an EQ mount? I assume it's got tracking in both RA and DEC?

Astrophotography is a tough way to start in the hobby - it can be quite time consuming and expensive if you let it be.
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Old 29-09-2007, 06:08 PM
nimsie
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Yes it's on a EQ3 (appartly not the best or most stable but the most I could afford for amature status) and yes to the dual auto tracking in R.A and DEC.

Still working the whole kit out, but had some great views of the moon last night!!
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Old 01-10-2007, 10:12 AM
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TV John
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Hi Nimsie and welcome to the world of astronomy.

I have a SW500C which is the 'shorty' version of the SW500 and probably loses a little quality in comparison due to extra internal reflecting but it fits under the bed of the caravan well.

At a guess the DSLR will probably give you reasonable results for moon and planets but long exposure times require tracking accuracy that the budget mounts don't have. Consider the web-cam option as this means you can take a series of short exposures then align and stack them via freely available software which gives you a reasonable resolution. The attached pics were taken after having my scope for a matter of weeks - you'll see better shots but I was happy as a newbie. I use a Celestron NexImage (A$136 delivered from US ebay), I guess the next step is to split the bitmaps into each colour channel to process separately but I haven't got to that stage yet! Have a look in articles - very helpful.

I agree with Iceman that astrophotography is time consuming and you'll find you can spend nights looking at a laptop screen and never taking the time to just look through your scopes eyepiece. I also bought a second hand 8" Dob just so I could get back to the basics of scanning the sky and going 'wow!'.

Have fun with it,

Cheers

John
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