Nexstar 8SE - next steps

[Efendy]

Hi all,

There are many treads like this but I wanted my own so please excuse me :)

I bought my 8se July last year. We have been enjoying it with my young family from the backyard of my bortle 6 home in the Northern suburbs of Melbourne. Except the east, I have most of the sky available about 40 degrees up.

Since then I added a power bank, a skyportal, a celestron f/6.3 reducer, zoom eyepiece (svobony), a uhc filter (svobony), accessories to attach a Sony dslr to the telescope to try a bit of short exposure astrophotography, bits and pieces to make it easy to align the telescope etc.i am using skysafari 6 and stellarium.

I've had good views of all planets except venus, moon, nebulas like Orion and eta carina, tucane 47, jewel box, gem cluster and other bits and pieces and had a glimpse of tarantula nabula with averted vision as well as felt the presence of rosette nebula!

Is this all in the summer sky that we can see? Can I add more to above by using a filter like OIII for planetary nebulae? I am sure there will be more Dsos in the coming months that we can see with the existing optical train?

I am considering becoming a member of ASV and the dark site is about an hour drive so wouldn't mind travelling there with the family.

Another option I can see is Eaa. I am saving up for a camera now but it would take a while before I can buy a decent one.

Obviously, upgrading the scope is out of the question due to finances and I want to realise 8se's full potential.

I want to stick to visual for the most part as I want my young family involved.

Any thoughts and direction are much appreciated.

Cheers,
Abdullah

[Tulloch]

Hi there, I think that EAA might be your next step here. You don't need a fancy camera (your DSLR would be fine) on bright colourful objects like Orion (EAA will turn the colour on) and you can show it on a laptop screen in real time. SharpCap will do this well, and can remove the field rotation from your mount on the fly. The family will still be able to see what's happening on the screen, but the results will be more spectacular.

In about 6-8 months time, the outer planets will start to come out at a reasonable time, for best results on them you should think about a better eyepiece (in the 7-8mm range) and/or the Baader Contrast Booster filter to really show off the colours in those cloud bands. A 2x barlow and planetary camera like the ASI224MC would be ideal for imaging the planets if you get really interested :).

Andrew

[Dave882]

I certainly agree with Andrew that eaa is a great option if you want to extend your use of the 8se. You will be restricted to stacking 5-20sec exposures but this is more than enough to reveal even some of the dimmer dso’s.

Another advantage is that I’ve found that my young kids struggle to see stuff through the eyepiece but really enjoy looking at images on the screen (kids these days ay). Even a cheap small-sensor Astro camera will be able to give you decent live views from the suburbs in the middle of harsh light pollution with a cheap LP filter. Switch to video mode and you are ready to start planetary imaging.

You won’t be able to get postcard pics with an 8se with even the most expensive camera but a cheap colour camera will give you 1000x more than you can get through the eyepiece in the suburbs.

[Tulloch]

As an example of what you can do with a DSLR and an altaz mount, here is an image of the Orion nebula I took with my Celestron Evolution (alt/az) mount with a 6" SCT, f/6.3 focal reducer and Canon 700D DSLR in the bortle 6 suburbs of Melbourne with no filters. It's a stack of about 30 frames, each 20 sec long at ISO 1600 and been pretty heavily post processed, but its a far cry from what you will see through an eyepiece. You will not see this in live eaa, but with a bit of practice you might come close.

The ASV has lots of videos on their Facebook page on how to take and process images, well worth a look.

Andrew

[Tulloch]

SharpCap has a great feature whereby it can live stack all the images in a folder in real time, so if your capture software can save the photos to a folder on your computer, SharpCap will stack them on the fly and you can play with the brightness settings in real time.

Here's an example of what it did to my image above (that I spent quite a bit of time on) from the 30 or so frames I captured, it's not perfect (as I didn't spend much time on it) but it's not bad ...

[Efendy]

Hi Andrew,

Thank you for the detailed suggestions. All taken on board. I'll look at the filters you suggested as well.

As you said, Eaa I guess is one of the directions I would take. I haven't tried yet but my sony dslr may not work well with sharpcap but I know an ascom driver exists. However, liveview doesn't work with it. I'll still fiddle with it.
When I can afford, I will buy a dedicated camera with a decent sensor size so that I can use it for all dsos.

Thank you
Abdullah

[Efendy]

Hi David,

Great point re kids and screens. They would definitely enjoy seeing dsos appear on the screen!

I tried some AP with the Sony I have and 10s exposures were maximum before seeing star trails on North West direction.

It looks like a decent dedicated camera can serve us well for eaa and planetary imaging. Thank you for the tips.

Cheers
Abdullah

[Efendy]

Both AP and Eaa of Orion look awesome Andrew, congrats.
I'll try to use my sony camera with sharpcap and report.

Cheers,
Abdullah