Hi Chantelle...welcome to IIS
OK, astrophotography....the BIG money pit!!! (or can be
)
It all really depends on what you want to take piccies of. The Moon and planets are quite easy to do on a limited budget, but DSO's (Deep Space Objects) are a different kettle of fish altogether (for most).
For a budget starter, you can get away with a 8-10" dobsonian telescope (a telescope with a simple alt-az mount), a camera mount for the eyepiece/focuser and a point and shoot digital camera
. That will give you reasonably good shots of the Moon and the planets. Try these places...
MyAstroShop ,
Andrews and
Bintel
If you want very good shots of the Moon and planets, plus be able to take good photos of DSO's, you'll need a good solid EQ mount and a reasonably good telescope setup. A setup like this...EQ6 mount, Meade 8" LX200 ACF OTA, ST80 guidescope and Starshoot autoguider will set you back about $4400. That's without a camera. Then you can either go the DSLR or dedicated CCD route. A Canon EOS 400D would make a good, relatively cheap DSLR to get for taking piccies, but a CCD camera will have quite a few advantages over the DSLR. Least of which is it can be cooled and doesn't needed any mods done to it to make it dedicated for astrophotography. A really good CCD camera would be the Atik 314L+, which goes for $1649 at Andrews. Or even the Starshoot Pro V2 at Bintel, for $1999.
So, for a basic mid range astropic setup, you could go $6000 to $6500 or so. You could lower the cost by about $1000 if you decide to leave out the 8" Meade and get an ED80 refractor, which you can pickup for $800 to $1100 depending on which brand you buy. This will be great for widefield shots and large sized targets like the Orion Nebula and Andromeda Galaxy.
What I would suggest, before you decide to shell out your money, is join a local astroclub and go to their meetings. That way, you'll get to see the equipment they have and find out how much it costs, how easy it is to setup etc. The you'll have a better idea of what you may want to get for yourself, plus you'll learn off the more experienced users.
I'm a student so funds are limited and am willing to accumilate what i need over time.
C
