Astrophotography

[JMallows]

Show us the pics you have taken. Havent taken any for a few years, but these are what i took with my 12inch Newtonian (76 inch focal), found it very hard to get a good focus due to the movement (these were taken without the tracking motor in operation)

[Toby]

Love that last one 

[Gavv8]

What would be a good lens to use for this in a canon ef-efs mount?, i feel like treating myself.

[JMallows]

Love that last one 

Same, its amazing to see it for real in the eyepiece, much better than the camera! It doesnt look real!

[Adrena1in]

Saturn was always my favourite through the eyepiece, but I never managed a decent photo really.  The time I had an 11" Celestron SCT, (f/10), which was fabulous, Saturn's rings were exactly side-on to us, so it didn't make for good viewing or photos.

Here are a few of my old shots.

First decent moon pic taken through a 1200mm f/9 cheap Refractor.


Can't remember which scope this was...might've been the Celestron C11.


My best attempt at M42, the Orion Nebula.  6 minutes of exposure through a 600mm f/6 cheap Refractor.


400mm cheap Refractor telescope, M31 Andromeda Galaxy.  Moon is just there to show how big M31 appears in the sky, which never ceases to amaze me!


The Red Planet.


My 2nd favourite Planet.


And finally just some star trails.

[Adrena1in]

What would be a good lens to use for this in a canon ef-efs mount?, i feel like treating myself.

Depends what you want to shoot really.  What's your biggest lens at the moment?  Because if you take the moon for example, you need about a 1400mm lens in order to magnify it enough for it to fill the frame.  My second moon photo above was taken through a 3000mm lens.  Unfortunately, objects which you can photo by hand, (i.e. a single, relatively short exposure), are miniscule.

Other things though, like Deep Sky Objects, (nebulae, galaxies, etc), can be relatively large, and can be photographed with a smaller lens.  But you need long exposures, and therefore you need your camera mounted on a device that will rotate slowly to counteract the spin of the earth, (and therefore keep the target object in the same place on the sensor).  These tracking mounts can be expensive.

[Gavv8]

Blimey..biggest i have is 300mm although i do have access to a telescope that could take a camera mount.

[Adrena1in]

Blimey..biggest i have is 300mm although i do have access to a telescope that could take a camera mount.

Cool, give it a try.  My photo of the M31 Galaxy, with a same-size representation of the moon in the corner...that was taken with a 400mm telescope, (not a 600mm like I originally thought).  Original image would've been 12Mb, so something like 4272x2848 pixels.  At 400mm you can see how the moon doesn't take up much of the frame.  Chuck on a 2x or 3x teleconverter to your 300mm lens and you should be able to get some half decent shots.

[shepgti]

ever tried anything like these lenses? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1600mm-Samyang-Mirror-Lens-for-Nikon-D100-D80-D40-D70-D50-D90-D4-D800-D800E-/261184982809?pt=UK_Lenses_Filters_Lenses&hash=item3ccfd68f19

[Toby]

So all you really need is a big lense?!  I'm very intrested!