First Astrophotography rig

[lunartic (Greg)]

Hello All.

Was hoping to get a bit of advice....

I come from an exhausted world of a modest refractor and an ALT-AZ mount.
For obvious reasons I would like to sink my teeth into imaging. Initially I will be using my 450D.

For a starter setup I have come up with the following

A Meade 102mm ED APO on a HEQ5-Pro Mount.
The Meade comes with a 8x50. Will that be sufficient to guide?
What king of tracking camera should I stick behind the guides scope?
There is alot of software out there.... any ideas?

Any advice would help me out a lot.

CHEERS

[acropolite (Phil)]

The Meade comes with a 8x50. Will that be sufficient to guide?

From my limited experience, maybe, I had some success guiding with an old 70-200 zoom lens and an orion starshoot autoguider. The Orion starshoot isn't as sensitive as many autoguiders but it worked quite well on the old lens (which was under 50mm aperture). The starshoot comes with PHD for guiding.

If you're after a cheaper solution you could use a toucam with PHD, but you will need some extra hardware to interface with a laptop.

[lunartic (Greg)]

is the idea to back the guide scope with the toUcam?

[Alchemy (Clive)]

Yes the guidescope has the webcam at the rear instead of an eyepiceand diagonal, the images it takes are fed into the computer and a program such as PHD which calculates a stars centroid and makes tiny adjustments to your drive to keep the star centered.
Most people use a separate scope for guiding, although I have heard a finderscope being used before.... Somewhere...... The problem would be focusing and ataching it.

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

I have heard of Finder scopes being used as Guide scopes but a lot of mods needed to fit the webcam in prime focus. Possibly needs cutting up.

[OzRob (Rob)]

Originally Posted by mswhin63

I have heard of Finder scopes being used as Guide scopes but a lot of mods needed to fit the webcam in prime focus. Possibly needs cutting up.

Here is an example of the modification: Constructing a guide scope from a finder scope

[bmitchell82 (Brendan)]

I use the standard skywatcher 9x50 finderscope as a guid scope all the time with a Meade dsi 1 ccd. It is easy, cheap and provides a good selection of guide stars. for mine i machined up a puck to go in the rear of the finder scope tube virtually giving it a 1 1/4 eyepiece hole.

alot of my images on my site are guided with the finderscope and that is 1200mm focal length.

good luck
brendan

[En1gma (Robert)]

You have got a very similar setup to mine
http://members.iinet.net.au/%7Een1gm...o/_DSC0114.JPG

One thing I can suggest is to keep your current finder intact (as I still use mine myself when doing my GOTO alignment etc..) and see if you can pickup a second hand Meade finderscope from a SCT. Probably one of the better finders to modify as their ID is .2 mm larger than a standard 2" to 1" 1/4 ep Adapter - The standard Meade ones are a tad smaller (i'm guessing you have the Synta made ED scope).

To obtain focus, you will just need to cut down the tube by 25-30mm.

As for whether it is sufficient to guide, Definitely is and I have achieved great tracking results (15+ minutes with no issues so far).

Guidecamera wise, would suggest a QHY5. (reasoning for me as I am running a netbook and EQmod lags the system up real bad)

Rob.

[lunartic (Greg)]

Thanks all for the info. Having an issue with the QHY5 drivers for my Mac. Appears as though there aren't any....

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

Originally Posted by lunartic

For obvious reasons I would like to sink my teeth into imaging. Initially I will be using my 450D.

There is alot of software out there.... any ideas?

You can try APT Astro Photography Tool is a good low cost starting. If you want during bright moon wash outs you can do some live view plantary work.

I like the features on the paid version but the free version is a really good starting point to see how it goes.

For long exposure you are still going to need a guide scope.
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Not sure if you have already invested in it have you got the EOS to eyepiece adptor yet for prime focus on the 450D

Cheers