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Old 02-07-2013, 08:41 AM
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sil (Steve)
Not even a speck of dust

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Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: Canberra
Posts: 1,474
Not just a response to the original post but general advice for so many wanting to get into astrophotography:


I'd suggest stop looking at buying any equipment and use what you have instead. Just like buying a DSLR doesn't make you a photographer, buying all the scopes & mounts won't magically take the photos you expect (and I guarantee at this point whatever you buy won't meet your expectations).

You can take great photos of the sun (using a baader filter, make your own for $30) or the moon handheld with any camera. On a camera tripod you can capture stunning shots of Eta Carina and Orion nebulae, along with wide field views of the milky way.

The key is processing. Having used photoshop doesn't really help either. You need much finer control and find a workflow (several workflows really) to take the images you have and tease out as much signal as possible from them. There is no software package that does it all for you, so you need an understanding of what software tool to use, when and how. Jumping between tools as the need arrises.

As a simple starting point take a dozen handheld shots of the moon (you do know how to use the camera right?) saving to RAW not jpeg formats. Process the RAW to TIFF (16bit). Download PIPP (free) and process the shots centering (pre-aligning) the moon to a cropped TIFF. Load those into Registax (free) and fine tune the alignment, stack and learn how to use the wavelets to tease out finer details.

What most people fail to realise is a camera lens is a refractor scope already. Photographing deep through a scope is not as simple as attaching a camera, pressing the button and there you have a finished photo. Be prepared to end up taking hours to process a single image. If you learn the processes and software first you'll understand better the limitations of your current equipment and your own skills/patience. You may find you need a new computer (certainly more storage space) or you just don't have the time or aptitude to deal with processing all the data properly (and over time you'll learn new techniques and want to go back over earlier data to re-process it better).

You're budget isn't going to get you much in the way of quality imaging cameras and scopes. But you can get some great pics with a smaller budget and get a refractor on a AltAz GOTO mount and a ZWO ASI120MC camera for under $1k. That will get you going on capturing planets. You'll need something that can record the video footage efficiently (without dropping frames) and expect to be capturing 100fps and ending up with 12GB+ files for only a couple of minutes footage to process. And you only need a couple of minutes capture for planetary anyway due to the planet rotation. This is a simple and easy setup to use, only a couple of minutes of lightweight equipment you can setup anywhere. The GOTO refractor will also be a great visual scope to use and later on if you decide to pursue AP further it'll be a useful scope to look through while another scope is capturing.

Basically, I'd say LEARN first with what you have before you spend on gear you don't understand or need yet.
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