A few weeks back I bought a 6" dob and I have been having great fun. I am currently looking at doing some astrophotography. I am looking at buying a new camera mainly for use with the telescope, possibly the mid range canon eos, but I currently have a fuji fine pix s5000.
I am wondering if using my 6" dob wil I be able to snap things like the paliedes or other nebulas or clusters or will it be limited to much closer objects
distance isn't your issue at all. its tracking that will kill you. Planets and other solar objects you would be able to take a video and then re stack them after. if you click on my website below follow the link at the top to gallery then down to equipment you will see what is kind of required.
Do remember that what i have isn't so much a beginners kit, don't let that dismay you either!
thanks for the help guys, i was looking around and i wondered if someone know whether i would be able to mount my 6" dob on an orion teletrack alt az mount.
the link for the mount is here http://www.telescope.com/Mounts-Trip.../35/p/9481.uts.
this would allow for a cheap mount and i can always upgrade the tracking system later on.
ALT AZ = field rotation, for longer exposure photography ( which is the kind you are talking about with nebula) most people recomend a skywatcher eq6 as minimum, I went against this and got a Heq5 but I can see why people suggest the bigger 6.
The AZ mount will only be useful for the moon, sun (with appropriate filters) and planets. DSO objects will rotate even though you are tracking them, so they may stay in the centre of the camera, but will rotate, so it is hard to stack the images.
Other than getting a hyper star setup (which your scope doesn't support), there really is no other way than using an equatorial mount, if you want to do deep-sky.
The new LX80 will be out in January, it may be worth a look at the more budget end.
But try the moon and jupiter first with what you have *now* and you can get used to taking images and using the software etc. then wait for a 2nd hand HEQ5Pro, EQ6Pro or similar to come up, or look at the LX80. You will learn a lot while you are waiting and get some lovely moon and jupiter images while you wait. Grab a filter and have a go at the sun too!
Im just going to put this in really large bold letters...
DO NOT POINT YOUR TELESCOPE AT THE SUN WITHOUT SPECIAL FILTERS OR YOU WILL CAUSE DAMAGE TO EQUIPMENT AND PERMANENT DAMAGE TO YOUR EYES.
i know the others have put mention of taking photos of the sun but when your just starting out sometimes you can miss these little small pieces of information!
Wow guys another bunch of helpful replies, thanks a lot.
And Brendan thanks for the reminder but I'm pretty sure no one has ever damaged there eyes by looking at the sun so I'm sure adding magnification would have no effect. ; D jokes. Seriously helpful though guys
I'm just sitting here thinking about how much bigger my telescope is than the ****ty magnifying glass I used to burn things into mdf as a kid. I'm thinking metal melting temperatures would be achieveable
