First Telescope purchase

freefall

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I'm thinking of getting a pretty basic telescope to see if I'm going to get into astro photography or if it is a fad for me. The thought process is that if I really like it I will upgrade my gear over time.

The only question I have is: how on earth do I know that my slr can attach to it to take photographs?
 
Sorry no advise to offer but will keep an eye for your findings\other members responses.

Edit - this forum may be worth a look - link
 
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It's not as simple as getting a T adaptor. You need enough back focus to allow the scope to focus an image on the camera's sensor which will be much further from where the eyepiece normally sits. Not many allow this. You could use a Barlow lens (many scopes come with one) but then your field of view may be restricted.

I can assure you however, that the Skywatcher Explorer 150P does, as I have one, and have no problem achieving focus with it. It's not too expensive either.
 
Cheers David - so were he to get one would he need anything else or could he just buy that and everything is there to attach his 5DII or 7D?
 
If you got the 150P all you'd need was a T ring adaptor, yes. However, views through a scope obviously are magnified and things will move across the field of view very quickly. So realistically, if you want long exposures, you need to have what's called an equatorial mount, which rotates the scope around the earth's axis, and it must also be motor driven to match the earth's rotational speed - this will keep the objects still within the frame. These are more expensive and even WITH a motor driven EQ mount, you're limited to a couple of minutes unless you get what's called a guided mount, which uses a second scope, camera and computer to make micro adjustments to the drives... then we're getting into serious money.

Equatorial mounts are tricky to use, and they need polar aligning with the earth's vertical axis (usually by aligning it with Polaris, the north star).

If you want to photograph anything more than the moon, it gets very complex, very quickly I'm afraid. Astro-photography is just one of those hobbies.. like photography, that has a steep learning curve.

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/reflectors/skywatcher-explorer-150p-eq3-2.html

That's the 150P. You can see the difference in price between the non driven and driven versions. The driven version also has a GoTo facility which will point thr scope automatically to anything you want from it's database... and then track it for you. You still have to align the mount first though.

With serious astro-photography, the mounts are more important than the scopes actually.
 
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Thats a great write up, thanks David and you're right it does leap up in price a bit!

For freefall - I think these are the T-Rings - here - from the same site David listed before.
 
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