How to use DSLR with Telescope

[Vasili]

Hi guys,

I am new to the forum, so please be nice

I have a Celestron CPC 11 and a Canon 60D Dslr camera, and am having troubles with taking pictures.
I have been able to attach the Dslr to my telescope but am struggling with taking pictures.
So can you please tell me what i need to know, in taking pictures of space.

[blink138 (Pat)]

hi vasili.......... wow where to start!
you need to have a good to very good polar alignement,you will need an intervalvometer so that you do not have to physically "press" the camera button and set it to "bulb"
if you have not got a wedge on the cpc you may only get up to a one minute exposure before you get what is called field rotation
the best photographer with a similar setup to you is our member wayne anderson perhaps private message him
pat

[rustigsmed (Russell)]

without a intervalvometer for your DSLR you can take 30second exposures. it's also good to put a 10 second countdown on to stop vibrations occurring when taking the picture - otherwise the first pic will be blurry. you can make it take (i think up to 10 photos in a row). you would want to up the iso to ~1600 -3200 (max) for a 30 second exposure. take as many as you can of the object. after some time there will be some field rotation around the edges but you can just be rid of that later on when you process them in DSS. also it is worth taking 'dark frames' keep the same settings and get 10-20 pics with the lens cap on, you use them in DSS too.

for planetary 'photos' people generally take videos for 1-2 minutes and use Registax 6 to align the frames and stack.

when i was taking photos with my goto dob i went for around 20 second exposures @ iso 3200.
you can see them here http://www.flickr.com/photos/80336656@N07


best of luck!

Rusty

[wayne anderson (Wayne)]

Hi Vasili, thanks for your message. If you are using the CPC 11 in alt/az mode with no guiding just tracking your setup would be similar to mine, it has limitations but can give good results.

When setting up the scope make sure it is level and aligned very well this will help in getting the scope to track the object well.

Use a focal reducer I use a f6.3 reducer and spend some time getting the focus at its best I use a bahtinov mask.

For alt/az no guiding photography you need to use short exposures and high iso I use 25 second exposures at iso 1600 and try to take between 200 and 400 subs, also take 50 dark and 50 bias frames and stack them in DeepSkyStacker or similar software. The resulting stacked image will still have some elongated stars from field rotation at the edges of the frame but should be OK at the centre, just crop the edges then you can process the image in Photoshop, Gimp, Star tools or similar software I use Gimp and Star tools.

It can take some time to master the art of alt/az no guiding Astrophotogaphy, I have found that learning good image processing skills is a great help.

I hope this helps a little and I know others will comment and help, keep looking at the information in this site.

You can see some of my alt/az no guiding images and information about settings at my astrobin gallery, just click on the link in my signature below.

[5ash (Philip)]

Hi Vasili ,
There is stacking software that enables you to simulate longer exposures by adjusting the stacking parameters. I used to use " images plus " to achieve this when I was taking pictures with an lx90 some years ago . If you can chase up the copy of sky and telescope that gave a write up of "images plus" you can see some results of this. You may even be able to buy a copy of images plus off an IIS member who has no need for it now.
Philip

[Vasili]

Thankyou all for helping, i am looking forward to now applying all this in 'the field'.