|
First of all mark - welcome!
Second, the dob will show you lots and is a great starting point, but if you are fairly sure that you want to get into astrophotography you will also need an equatorial mount.
The amazing photos that you have probably seen on the forum here are mostly made from lots of shots of the same object where the shutter is left open for a few minutes at a time. So you might image one object for a couple of hours and end up with 40 photos that need to be digitally "stacked" to bring out detail and minimise noise. The way an equatorial mount tracks the sky means that the orientation of the camera stays the same with respect to the sky, and all your shots are nicely aligned with each other
With a motorized dob, due to the way it tracks the sky, each subsequent shot is a little rotated when compared to the previous one, and sometimes if the exposure is long enough you will see the rotation in the shot as a smearing of the stars.
The next point is - don't skimp on the mount. There are some mounts that will give you no end of pain if you try to image with them...I have first hand experience here! If you get the 10" dob and mount it on an equatorial when you want to image - you will need at least an EQ6.
Cheers Adam
|