Author Topic: Astrophotography  (Read 4749 times)

Offline bobbarley

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Re: Astrophotography
« Reply #20 on: 30 March 2013, 09:36 »
I'm also quite keen on this.  My girlfriend bought me a telescope for my birthday, and I can buy an adaptor for attaching my Sony A200.  Need to give this a go when I can get out of Manchester and actually see something!

Offline Toby

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Re: Astrophotography
« Reply #21 on: 30 March 2013, 09:53 »
I've allways wanted a telescope! But I'd want a decent one and there not cheap  :whistle:

Living so close to the South Downs iv got the perfect place!

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Offline Adrena1in

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Re: Astrophotography
« Reply #22 on: 30 March 2013, 11:47 »
I've never tried one of those mirror camera lenses myself, but been interested to.  You'd still only really be able to shoot the moon with it, and perhaps one of the bigger planets...maybe a bright comet or two.

Bobbarley, what telescope did your girlfriend buy you?

Toby, I started with two telescopes and a mount, some eyepieces and stuff, and it came to under £1000 for a complete setup.  It was considered cheap!!  Certainly for astrophotography anyway.  I've had telescopes as big as me which were a couple of hundred, but which I couldn't take pictures through.

Newtonian and Dobsonian Reflector telescopes you can't generally use for photography...not with a DSLR.  Refractors and Compound Reflectors though, you can.  Mostly.
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Offline bobbarley

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Re: Astrophotography
« Reply #23 on: 30 March 2013, 13:41 »
I got this one.

http://www.scopesnskies.com/prod/stargazing/skywatcher/starter-scopeevostar90AZ3.html

So what's so great about the Sky Watcher Evostar 90 AZ3 telescope kit?

The Evostar 90 is a great "classic" 90mm astronomy telescope. It has a good-sized aperture (90mm) to achieve high resolution images, and has a useful long focal length to achieve high magnifications without making the telescope too difficult to use.

At two or three times the price, this 90mm is a well-engineered scope - at our price it's extraordinary value for money.

The included AZ-3 mount and tripod is a brilliant innovation allowing the telescope to be used terrestrially in daytime (for distant target viewing) and also to smoothly track targets in the night sky, at the turn of a knob - be sure to watch our video demonstration of this feature. The Evostar 90 can be upgraded and added to in many different ways.

For example, it has a standard 1.25" eyepiece holder (regarded by the telescope industry as the hallmark of a serious telescope) allowing a wide range of additional accessories to be attached. These accessories include camera adaptors (to try your hand at wildlife and astro-photography), 2x Barlows, to greatly increase magnification with each eyepiece as well as wide range of specialist eyepieces. A safe Solar observation filter is also available for Evostar 90.

What can you see with the Evostar 90?

At medium power the Moon becomes a fabulously intricate landscape of craters, rays and rills. At higher power individual crater systems can be explored. The planet Mars will show numerous details on its surface and the polar cap can be seen during ideal observing conditions.

At good observing times, when observed at just 50x magnification using the included 10mm eyepiece, the planet Jupiter will appear as a banded disc larger in size than you normally see the full Moon with the unaided eye! In ideal viewing conditions, detail can be seen in the violent atmosphere of this greatest of the gas giants that can be observed in motion on the planet's disk in just a few minutes. The four main moons of Jupiter will be seen orbiting the giant planet, sometimes casting shadows onto Jupiter's dense cloudy atmosphere - they too can be see to clearly move and change position in just 20 minutes of observing. And don't forget these are all things that you cannot possibly see with the un-aided eye (unless you actually go there that is!).

The planet Saturn will show its magnificent ring system and its bright famous moon Titan. These are just a few of the things that can be seen in our own solar system with the Evostar telescope.

Offline Adrena1in

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Re: Astrophotography
« Reply #24 on: 30 March 2013, 14:06 »
Cool, you'll get some pretty decent moon and planetary views with that then, and also see plenty of nebulae and galaxies through it.  (Don't be too excited about the deep sky objects, they all look like fuzzy, grey/white blurs through a telescope...you don't see any colour unless you start doing long-exposure photography.)

But yeah, grab yourself a T-Mount and T-Adapter and you can fit your camera to it.
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Gavv8

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Re: Astrophotography
« Reply #25 on: 30 March 2013, 18:54 »

Offline DubFan

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Re: Astrophotography
« Reply #26 on: 02 April 2013, 11:52 »
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

That's a bit misleading. They're selling it as a 1600mm lens, but it's actually an 800mm lens with a 2x tele-converter.

Samyangs are meant to be quite reasonable, at least in their short primes, although they are all manual focus.


Offline Adrena1in

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Re: Astrophotography
« Reply #27 on: 18 April 2013, 19:37 »
In all honesty it would have to be absolutely massive to be a 1600mm and still good quality.

But you don't need a massive lens really.  This was taken with a 50mm prime lens.



I took about fifty images, at f/3.5, ISO1600, 10s exposure, with my Canon EOS 450D, and then stacked them all together in a program called DeepSkyStacker.  Bit of post-processing to brighten things up a bit.

Okay, I know it's pretty crap, but for an astronomer it's quite interesting.  The blur near the bottom right is Comet Panstarrs.  It's just passing through the solar system on its 100,000 year orbit, on its way out again now.  It was hoped to be naked-eye visible, but never really proved that bright...not from the UK anyway...not from the South.  (Wait until Comet ISON appears in November...that could be amazing!)

A bit further up in my image, and left a bit, is another blur.  That's the Andromeda Galaxy, M31.  On a clear night that is naked-eye visible, and is the most distant of such objects.  2.5 million light years away.
2009 Golf GTD in Pearlescent Black.

Offline Toby

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Re: Astrophotography
« Reply #28 on: 21 April 2013, 00:15 »
Meitiour shower tonight!

A real 304bhp 286lbft in a mk4 golf!

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