Quote:
Originally Posted by caj1311
Thanks Aidan. I am absolutely expecting a lot of frustration - if it all gets to me I can always piggy back my DSLR onto the scope and take some less frustrating shots  ! I don't mind learning the hard way - lots of frustration makes you work out how it all needs to work. I know that the FOV is going to be very small, so mosaics are going to be necessary - I am familiar with them from terrestrial imaging but not for astro. I am going to try some high res lunar landscapes and see how I go with mosaics with them before trying anything further out. I have sent an email to Advanced Telescope Supplies for some further info on sbig CCD - I can't find many Australian suppliers? Are you (or anyone else reading this) aware of any with a website I could look through and contact as needed? |
ATS is run by Peter Ward, a frequent poster here on IIS, i believe he is overseas at the moment. ATS, Bintel, Andrews comms and AEC are all good vendors, i have had good experience with them all but ultimately the best info about products come from the manufacturer themselves. SBIG has a good site with all the info you need and if you do a conversion to AUD, add on gst you will get a guide to the price.
one thing that is a premium for astrophotographers is clear moonless skies. if you are imaging in mosaics then you are going to need much more imaging time. as a rough guide, you will want an hour of subs for each filter (LRGB), a mosaic of 4 panels will take you 16 hours. so do think about the targets you want to image. if you have a DSLR, i would recommend using that first. a guide camera such as the QHY5L ii can double as a planetary camera for your long focal length OTA (if you buy second hand you can sell for a similar price down the track anyway) i would then get a nice refractor. the money you would have spent on the ccd, filter wheel, focuser and filters you can get an amazing refractor, the guide scope and camera. that will have a decent FOV so you can capture amazing shots with much less imaging time. just a thought
if you want to use the scope you have now (i completely understand that) then i would still start off with the DSLR, you wont see the benefit of a ccd yet and it requires a lot less imaging time as it is one shot colour.