What space telescope I can attach cam to

combat squirrel

combat squirrel

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Not sure where to put this but with the other lenses seems ideal!

So I'm after a space telescope budget 300 but will stretch to 500 if it gets me massive gains.

Needs to be:

1) as powerful as possibly can while still maintaining a quality image
2) MUST allow me to mount my canon EF camera to take pics (5d)
3) not essential but if it had a motorised mount to let it point me in the right direction for key astronomical observations that would be good
 
Hmm this is interesting I was watching stargazing live the other night.. Which I guess you might have too as they talked about al this on it, if you get no joy here it might be worth checking there website.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/tv/features/stargazing/

It looks like something I would like to get my daughter into!

Hope this help
 
I am no expert in this field, having only recently started but I suggest a google of the subject and search some of the astronomy forums for better input.

A couple of days ago and after a fair amount of research we got a Nexstar 4SE telescope, which suited us as we wanted something light and portable to get away from light pollution. It has a find and go motorised mount with a database containing some 40,000 points of interest (realistically you're never going to see a
Lot of them).

It also has a red spot scope that you centre on you're target for easier location and alignment.

On the end of the tube it has connection for a camera, but you will need to buy an adapter and t piece to fit your camera to the scope. Basically you can then type in what it is you want to see and it will find it, flick the knob for the mirror to choose either the eye piece or camera, if you have a suitable webcam or live view you can even use you're computer to view/record images.

This telescope however is only really good for planets and really bright objects due to the aperture value.

We also bought a filter kit containing various colour filters and a ND moon filter, 2 x Barlow lens (same as a 2x converter) and various magnification eye pieces.

You will probably need a suitable power supply as well, it will run on AA batteries but they don't last long and the auto finder works better with a more reliable power supply, built in the portable power supply also has a 800,000 candle power lamp and a smaller red lamp for setting up at night, you can jump you're car from it as well if needed :)

It's quite a complex hobby to get into and plenty of new terminology to learn but I researched it in depth and was quite happy to hear that our local telescope shop recommended the exact set up we were considering (without prompting)

All this brand new set us back £700 that included all attachments for my Canon and my dads Nikon. Not cheap but has given us a pretty good starting place.

Here is what we bought if you want to google reviews

Celestron Nexstar 4SE computerised telescope

Skywatcher power tank

Revelation eye piece and filter kit

1 x Canon mount

1 x Nikon mount

T piece to connect camera to telescope.

It another one of those hobbies where you're best to buy well, buy once but we reckon we did ok to get all that kit for £700
New locally.

Hope this helped, like I say I am new to it but did my homework :)
 
Thanks Rolyratman thats an awesome post !!

Yes im also a total beginner in terms of 'doing it properly' but I have a really old 'national geographic' reflector telescope iv used for a few years, mostly to poke a view at Jupiter and the moon, but yeah been getting into it more recently and seeing that it is possible to get pictures of nebula etc if done properly, as well as galaxys, so im well wanting to do that now. :)
 
Can't offer advice on scopes but would suggest you do need a motorised mount given how fast the sky appears to move.15 degrees an hour may not seem much but through a narrow field of view and given you need to take lots of shots of the same image and use long stutter speeds I think you really need to track the object.
 
I went for an astrotrac which is specifically made for dslr astrophotography. It's waiting for me at the sorting office.

If you keep your exposures wide and short, you should be able to get decent subs without a tracking mount/astrotrac or scope. With a deeper lens (200mm ish) you'll need some tracking though.

I'm a novice but looking forward to giving it a go over the rest of the winter and maybe the summer if I'm brave (3 hours ish of darkness means lots of late nights).
 
Beware: astrophotography can make normal photography look like loose change - and it'll cost lots to get the deep space photos shown on Stargazing Live! The first thing you want to ask yourself is what do you want to take photos of?Essentially, there are two types of astrophotography: planetary or deep space (i.e. galaxies/nebulas/star clusters).

Planetary photography needs:
  • Well aligned motorised mount
  • As much focal length as possible (typically people use catadioptic scopes like the Nexstar which start at f10) and add 2 or 3x convertors. You're up at F20 or F30 then (which gives great focal length, but very little light.
  • Sensitive webcam/video cam

Essentially, for planetary you take video and then process the thousands of frames of video to give a single end picture. You do this to get rid of the effects of the atmosphere. Detail is all about aperture - the best planetary phottographers (e.g. Pete Lawrence, Damian Peach) use 14" scopes with converters and can have better than 20m effective focal length! They also live in Selsey (where Patrick Moore lives - I think Damian Peach moved there specifically for the location) as that way they look over water and not - like I do - 2 miles or rising warm air from the nearest town.

Deep space objects need something different. For all nebulae (that are actually very faint) you need:
  • A good quality German Equatorial Mount (a good one starts around £900 and the mount is 90% of a good photo) that has been polar aligned to within inches of it's life (the GEM is able to track the rotation of the sky without rotating the field of view)
  • A fairly low power refractor to give wide angle views
  • DSLR - possibly modified to have the IR cut filter removed (a lot of the detail is in the near infra red) or a specialist peltier-cooled camera (think a couple of £k)
  • As little light pollution as possible.

You then take a number of very long exposures and stack them together in specialist software together with using something like Photoshop to enhance the images.

Both types of astrophotography can take a long time to set up if you don't have an observatory of some description where you can leave things assembled so you don't have to assemble things every time you want to use them.

The suggestion of an Astrotrac is a good one. It is probably the only cheap (if you consider £400 cheap) way of doing astrophotography without going bald in the process.

Stargazers Lounge was the best place I found for beginners: http://www.stargazerslounge.com Have a look in the photography section and see what sort of equipment people are using to get the pics you see there.
 
Totally agree about Stargazers lounge.
 
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