Beginner help

[rigneyl (Luke)]

Hi all

I'm just starting to try and gather information to enable me to setup a good basic beginners package for astrophotography. I currently have a 8" Skywatcher Dobsonian that I have been using to test the water to see if I am actually interested in heading down this path...so far the answer is yes.

The setup I'm thinking of is as follows (to be used for both deep-sky and planetary imaging):
Scope
Bosma Beta RE 80mm x 500mm Refractor - this will be used initially as my primary scope and hopefully later as a guidescope.

Mount
EQ6PRO Synscan go-to EQ Mount and tripod

Imaging
Canon 350D

as well as either a:
ATIK16IC
or
DFK21AU04.AS

UPGRADES AT A LATER DATE INCLUDE:

Scope
12" GSO Newtonian - for Planetary

Accessories
5 x TeleVue Powermate

Any information or help that anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Luke

[that_guy (Tony)]

if you can afford it I would personally go for a ED80. I posted a thread regarding that bosma and they all said that its not that good at all an can suffer from horrible coma and such... besides ed80 will be a good guide scope at a later stage.

P.S. are you gonna put a ring on your 8" newt to put on eq6? because you can use the ed80 as guide scope straight away...

just my 2 cents worth. Im a noob to astrophotography....

[big_dav_2001 (Davin)]

UPGRADES AT A LATER DATE INCLUDE:

Scope
12" GSO Newtonian - for Planetary

From one astrophotography newbie to another, the 12" GSO dob isnt too bad for planetary photography, but be prepared to spend a fair bit of time chasing the object (especially if using barlows) as it tends to leave the FOV pretty quickly...

Check out Mike Salway's (IIS i.d iceman) article on Astrophography with a dob:
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/63-201-0-0-1-0.html

Good luck
Davin

[Shiraz (Ray)]

Hi Luke
looks like a pretty good plan to me, but would suggest that you consider getting a mono planetary cam with filter wheel straight off - you will probably end up going that way if you want the best possible images.