Even with a telescope your human eyes are limited to planets and the moon, that's it. Forget about seeing galaxies with the naked eye, unless you have a 1-meter diameter telescope.
All other objects are basically points of light. Artificial satellites are really fun to see, but also points of light.
But a 2006 DSLR (EOS400) that I found in the garbage, connected to a cheap newtonian telescope can capture 1000X the detail your own eyes can see. Is your telescope too small? no problem. Just increase the exposure or ISO, you cannot do that with your eyes.
I've seen comets moving in real time. Tracking satellites, resolving detail on the ISS, the moons of Jupiter and Mars, incredibly detailed nebula, and a freaking quasar, all this from my window in the middle of the city, with the highest light-pollution.
One advice I have is, try to get a scope that's no more than 15 kg. More than that, and it's a hassle to move.
And get a computerized robotic mount. They are expensive (~800 us$), but awesome. No point of getting a 15-century instrument today.
"Even with a telescope your human eyes are limited to planets and the moon, that's it."
Andromeda, M42, star clusters, can all be seen with the naked eye, but only from a dark location, and unfortunately not in most cities. I've seen scores of galaxies with just a 8.75" reflector. The virgo cluster that's available at this time of year is amazing.
I agree with most of the rest of your post though, especially the weight thing.
I'd also suggest that learning to star-hop from one object to another is a great way to learn the sky, but it does put newcomers off sometimes.
There's astrophotography and then there's astrophotography, however - and you get drawn deeper and deeper into it.
I have a few scopes, but mostly use an 8" celestron schmidt-cassegrain - it's a decent all-rounder for astrophotography, particularly as I mostly do deep sky stuff.
I started with a simple T-adapter and a DSLR, and of course, you start as you describe playing with the exposure, the iso - but then you want to see fainter objects, and the noise starts being a problem, so you learn about computational techniques for frame stacking and noise reduction, but those have their limits, and the results you're getting are so-so, so...
You buy a peltier cooled CCD. You upgrade your mount because you aren't satisfied with the level of backlash you're getting. You get a star tracker. You learn several suites of astrophotographic software before settling on three.
Now you're taking images of deep sky objects, but they just don't have that certain something - so you go and buy filters - hydrogen alpha, OIII, RGB, and more, and you start getting some images you're impressed by - but... wouldn't it be great if you could just capture a bit more of that dim halo... maybe I should buy a bigger telescope. Maybe I need a dome to keep conditions more constant. Perhaps I should go on holiday and lug my telescope, counterweights and all, to the other side of the planet, and hang out up a mountain.
No, this is madness. So long as you stick with what you describe and don't go down the slippery slope as I did. With the setup you describe you can still do neat stuff like observing the Galilean moons and plotting their ephemerides, and take stunning photos of the moon and even the sun with a simple solar filter.
About capturing a bit more fo that dim halo, I always wondered... Wouldn't a secondary scope (with similar characteristics) result in an increased light gathering potential? I've also tried to look into visible-light interferometry, but there aren't many accessible resources on the subject.
My feeling is that there is a point in equipment in which you are simply better off getting a new rig (to work in paralell) than trying to get slightly bigger aperture (let's face it, 16" vs 14" is not as dramatic in light gathering and image quality as 8" vs 6"), but I'm not sure where that point lies.
But you also need another camera and probably another mount too.
The scope is actually the cheapest component in a astrophotography setup. Probably the 80% of the cost is the mount+the camera.
Absolutely. Then again, there are limits. I remember an old Meade model (no longer available) that was a 20", $36k monster. I was beautiful, and they sold it as an observatory-grade instrument. But the 16" models were priced close to $10k, so it sort of made sense (in that particular case) to duplicate the rig. My "napkin analysis" was:
20" diameter, ~315 squared inches of area[0], $36k
2x 16 inches diameter, ~402 squared inches of area, $20k
This prices did include mounts, but back then (more than 10 years ago) I wasn't very knowledgeable and I honestly don't know if they were good mounts. So there was margin to increase the light gathering and having spare money for the new camera.
Still, the most interesting use for multiple telescopes would be building and interferometer. I'll keep looking into that, with the procesing power available in todays machines it should be doable.
[0] I know the secondary mirror obstructs the light gathering, but I don't have precise figures, so let's go with it the area of the main mirror.
Yup, no idea what GP is talking about, most dobs aren't really great for AP since the focal plane isn't in the right location.
I'm a huge photo-nerd but I took one look at AP and was like "nope!" for the exact above reasons + extremely long capture times. We're talking hours of frames to see some things.
I just went straight to the cooled CCD/C11/hyperstar and don't repent. I would like a better mount though, but my EQ6 is just fine. Now I actually need a smaller scope :)
You are severely hurting your argument by making false statements about what is possible to see with the naked eye and what kind of diameter telescope is required.
An 20cm reflector is a very reasonable telescope that won't break the bank, will fit into most cars, and will enable you to see a large number of galaxies and nebulae with the naked eye. The claim that you need a 100cm telescope to do so is ludicrous and contradicted by all of established astronomy.
Which galaxies? Andromeda maybe. I'm talking of a city or suburban environment. Of course if you go really far into the forest, you can see a galaxy. But it's a hassle, how many times a year you can do that?
You are seriously moving the goalposts. You're somehow claiming that it makes more sense to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a huge telescope that you can't even transport in a consumer-sized vehicle than it does to simply drive somewhere that light pollution isn't a problem?
Astronomy is one of those things that you simply can't do well in an urban environment. Hiking or mountain climbing is another. You just have to accept it as one of the trade-offs of living in the city. No one forced you to live in a city. If astronomy is important to you, you can either put up with traveling for dark skies, or go move somewhere that doesn't suffer from bad light pollution. And if you are willing to spend the money to buy a one-meter scope, then astronomy is obviously very important to you.
Depends what it is that appeals about a telescope. If you want to see the most detailed possible realtime pictures of the ISS/Jupiter/Mars/etc. from your apartment, an Internet stream is going to be much better quality than anything you can produce with your own gear. So if you're using a telescope at all it's because you care about in some sense "seeing it with my own eyes". For some people using a camera "breaks" that feeling.
That's not really how telescopes work.
If it's light pollution additional aperture does not by itself preferentially distinguish between terrestrial and extra terrestrial light.
If it's humidity, radiated heat and particulate matter you'll hit the diffraction limit of your local atmosphere before you hit the resolution of a half meter scope.
N.B. if you have the money to buy a 1 meter scope and motorized mount sufficient for it you have the money to take a lot of trips with pair of binoculars to the Chilean desert.
I have a big-ass telescope and it's the main reason I can see stuff in light pollution. The trick, that I'm sure you know, is to pickup a bucket-load of light, filter the pollution light and let pass the star light. They are different colors, basically.
I've seen at least 6-7 galaxies/nebulae from my 8" Dobsonian and plan to try and find more this year. You just need to get out to an area with low light pollution. FWIW this is from the deck of my house(one of the benefits of living in a rural area) but totally possible to do.
There's also something surreal about seeing the milky way streaking across the sky with the naked eye. Worth it to get away from the city for that alone.
I have an 8" SCT and can see many galaxies, nebulae and clusters with it when we go to our dark spot. You can even see the spot on Jupiter on a really good night. They don't look like the hubble photographs of the galaxies, but there's something just breath-taking about seeing it with your own eyes, in real-time.
"I don't see anything, just a blurry spot"
"That's it! That's the galaxy."
"You sure? I think it might just be a smudge on the lense."
"No, no. Try moving where you're focusing your vision, around it, instead of looking at it directly. So you're viewing it mostly with your peripheral vision."
Here is a tip for those on a limited budget. Get an inexpensive telescope you can afford but can only see a few planets and the moon. Take it to a star party and set it up and aim it at a planet or the moon. Walk over to the other people who have the expensive setup with the computerized mounts, expensive and large lens & etc and ask to take a peek. These hobbyists typically love to share and will usually be happy to explain in great detail what galaxy, nebula or object you are looking at and the technical details of their setup if you ask.
I have gone to such events without a telescope and most of them were more than happy to let us take a peek. One of them let my oldest daughter request objects to see and he entered the request in one of those nice automated setups.
The advice here seems dated, even for 2015. Here's my advice:
1. Install an astronomy app on your mobile phone. Start with free ones, and see where it leads you. I recommend Skeye. This is good for going out by yourself and looking up things you see in the sky. For a PC, Stellarium is the best I have seen.
2. Get a camera capable of taking long exposure RAW photos, and get a tripod. There is so much hidden within the range of our FOV, that a telescope or binoculars are overkill. You'll use the camera for other things, so that won't be a special-nights-only investment. A basic DSLR should be fine, though I am curious about how well generic travel-zoom cameras do. If you have such a camera already, and played around with it, let me know.
Telescopes come after this stage.
> What about Astrophotography?
> Don't.
Sorry, this is shitty advice. His friend blew thousands of dollars on the hobby. I didn't.
> and untold thousands of rejected images
In the days of DSLRs? That's like saying I'm no good at computer games because of all the "bullets" that didn't hit my intended target. Lame. To put it bluntly.
Astrophotography without a telescope is indeed a good starting point. Get a bright 50mm lens and just with a simple barndoor tracker you can do amazing things. But as this article is about buying a telescope - and astrophotography through a telescope requires more skill than a complete beginner might imagine.
You don't even need a tracker at all. Just take a series of 20-second exposures, align them in hugin, and stack them. I have managed to get some remarkably good results this way, because the fact that the star background moves allows you to cancel out a lot of the noise that the camera and light pollution produces.
If the aligning phase can be automated, this looks like a nice plugin for ImageJ/ImageMagick or even an online version in a web page. (You an monetize it with ads about telescopes or something.)
(Bonus points for a deconvolution filter. (Is it useful here?))
Two pieces of gratis software (DeepSkyStacker Live) and RegiStax already do something like this, as well as PixInsight and the venerable Maxim DL, among others.
I did start with a ~50mm lens, but without a tracker. My camera can do up to 30s auto exposures, but those exhibit star trails at 50mm. I limit myself to 10s-15s exposures, and shoot a few hundred of them. The stars move, but the stacker (I use deepskystacker.free.fr) aligns them before stacking them. Though I'll add that DSS has a pretty steep learning curve of its own.
I agree that a beginner can't jump into astrophotography with a telescope. I'm of the opinion that learning with a camera and a tripod will teach a beginner to have reasonable expectations.
Would stacking work for that photo at all? Wouldn't the features on the ground be blurred if you align the stars?
I could believe it's just ISO 1600 and 30 seconds, as the EXIF says?
And you don't need to travel to Chile, just be away from the light pollution and be prepared to make the photos during the moonless night. Use the shooting timer and then you can even have a video of the stars moving, the Milky Way is always impressive:
The advice not to do astrophotography is meant for the beginner. He wants you to concentrate "on the thing itself" first, on watching the stars, navigating to an object, controlling the telescope, getting a feeling for what eyepiece is good for what situation, getting a feeling on how wind affects your viewing experience, getting a feeling on where to put up your telescope, getting a feeling on how the environment affects the number of stars you see. He wants you to learn all those basic things first and not skip it. He essentially advises you not to take part in a tech arms race as a beginner. When you got a good feeling for the sky and your telescope and an appreciation for nature, he will surely not tell you not to take beautiful photographs of the sky.
> The advice not to do astrophotography is meant for the beginner.
My advice is meant for the beginner as well. All the other things you pointed out, well, you need to learn those things for astrophotography, even if you don't have a telescope. Given how many of us have DSLRs, this is something we can start today.
> He essentially advises you not to take part in a tech arms race as a beginner.
I did not advice getting into the arms race either. My advice was on getting started for free. But here's the thing. I did not ignore recent advances in hardware and software (i.e. cameras, smartphones, apps).
Compare the simulated picture of M31 in the article and the one shot with a 50mm kit lens: http://petapixel.com/2014/07/30/sony-a7s-astrophotography-re.... One can do much better with lenses that go to 200mm, which the stock zoom lens on some cameras already do.
If you make huge investments on viewing equipment and try to get into astrophotography later on, it might turn out that your equipment is completely unsuitable. Ignore it at your own peril.
You see, there are two types of people going to concert nowadays: the first group goes there to listen to the music, enjoying the atmosphere, have a good time. The second group goes there to film everything with their phone, take selfies, post to social media while there.
The OP is of the former type: before you go there and photograph, first take time and enjoy the simple, dark sky.
There is nothing wrong with buying a telescope with an equatorial mount instead of a dobson. But buying a dobson (and thus not having the possibility of deep sky photography) might still be a valid endeavour to really connect you mind to your new hobby. And a dobson can be had so cheap it is a no-brainer.
I for one would recommend going with an equatorial mounted Newton telescope with 6"+ . Then you have a lot to see and learn. And one day, when you are ready, take it to go for the photos. There were those great russian Sirius-Telescopes in the 90", equipped even with a motor. Do they still exist?
> The OP is of the former type: before you go there and photograph, first take time and enjoy the simple, dark sky.
Contrast that with what I wrote:
> 1. Install an astronomy app on your mobile phone. Start with free ones, and see where it leads you. I recommend Skeye. This is good for going out by yourself and looking up things you see in the sky.
Please don't make assumptions about me. For the record, my photographs are not for the social media. They are for me. I did not post any of my own here.
With the author's method, one might get to see M31 as a gray fuzz after they acquire a 10" telescope. With my method, they get to see M31 with a fair bit of color, when it is viewable at their location. While it's fine to go the author's route if that's what satisfies them, the reason I have such little regard for the author is his arrogance about a field that he is completely ignorant of. A beginner learning from just his article would walk away with a distorted sense of the field. I'd advice learning from someone who is more well-rounded.
0. Get a decent pair of binoculars. If you have money, get image-stabilized binoculars. Learn your way around the night sky, and learn what's up there during the seasons.
I get more pure astronomical enjoyment from my binoculars than from my telescopes and AP rigs, honest.
I haven't used binoculars myself, so I wouldn't know whether to recommend it or not. But generally, when people ask me, I drive them in the direction of learning as much as they can before buying specialized equipment.
1) Spot on. If you won't bother to learn at least a few prominent bits of the sky first then a telescope will be fun about twice and then gather dust.
2) Subscribe? Er, see if you can buy individual copies first. I dropped my subs because, well, the articles all started to become pablum. Probably worth picking up a few issues when you start out.
3) Yes, join a club or tag along. There's no better way to get an idea of what it's about than to meet some enthusiasts and look through their scopes. And a really friendly and helpful crowd, in my experience.
Binocs: I bought 10x50s, and I wish I had bought 7x50s. The higher magnification is nice and all, and I can hold them steady enough...for a little bit. You can use 7x50 without strain for a lot longer. Also, yes, do buy binocs. You'd be amazed what you can see with a pair of 7x50s that you can't see with naked eyes. It's a great, cheap, convenient way to get started.
Telescopes: buy one that you can afford and that you will use. Like my binoc choice above, I bought something actually nice but big enough that it was a pain to haul around and set up. Save that for later. Buy something that you will pull out on a whim and have a nice evening. This is a very individual choice, of course. If you live in a fairly dark place and the farthest you will take your scope is to your back yard, by all means get that light bucket. :)
I get this question all the time - "I am want to get started with Astronomy - which telescope should I buy ?"
Its so important to make people realize , one does not need to have telescope right way. A decent pair of binocular (and probably a book with sky charts) is enough to spot the 1st few objects in the sky. If the hunger for celestial objects then one can go for the telescope else there is high chance the telescope will eat dust at home.
The other problem with hastily buy a telescope is that we end up buying a beginners one with low budget which is is usually no better than good binoculars of same power. (magnification and light gathering). It is netter wait and have a decent budget to buy a good telescope later on.
Another thing I commonly get is (after explaining that decent telescopes have the ability to swap eyepieces (If you're lucky it'll take 2" ones without vignetting)) is which eyepieces will "get the most zoom." People seem to be under the impression that because most objects in the sky are far away, they are also really "small." So if misguided they'll go buy 4mm Kellners with huge coma, have a painful time trying to get their scope aligned on any DSO, strain to see anything because everything looks dim in them, and squint because the eye relief is terrible. If somebody still wants a scope with high magnification because they're into planetary observing it's usually best to stick with a scope with a long focal length that brings it to f/12 or higher, then get some wide-FOV EPs for that.
1. Objects are distant so you only have so many photons from them that reach your current location. This means they appear "faint". The solution to that is a large aperture scope which collects more light.
2. Objects still appear relatively small even after collecting more photons. This can be improved somewhat by using an eyepiece to "zoom up" the image.
But just like magnifying a lower resolution image on a computer, the image through your scope gets fuzzy as you blow it up since you are still only collecting so many photons. So a good eyepiece doesn't help as much as beginners think it will.
The equipment that is sold for "this lets you do amazing things" is the worst equipment for general purpose use. In this particular comment, the magnification of a telescope is the ratio of the primary (mirror or lens) focal length divided by the secondary (eyepiece). An entry level scope might include a low magnification 25mm lens and a high magnification 10mm lens, but going down to 4mm will mean that the field of view is tiny making it hard to track objects. Also, higher magnification requires more light, so it will be dim on a small scope, and usually has a more limited range of eye relief, in other words, how carefully you have to move your head to just the right spot to see through it.
Kellner, EP: I think these are kinds of eyepieces, defined by the stacking of convex and concave lenses.
DSO: Deep space object.
FOV: field of view
2": the larger of two standard eyepiece form factors
- The magnification you get from a telescope/eyepiece combination is F_t/F_ep, where F_t is the telescope's focal length, and F_ep is the eyepiece's focal length.
- There are different kinds of eyepieces, and not all of them perform equally well on all targets. Broadly, you have "Planetary" targets, which are the planets, and DSOs, or "Deep-Sky Objects". The latter category includes galaxies, nebulae, and the like.
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Essentially, what GP is saying is, "Don't rush into buying equipment, look around and pick the right tool for the job".
Bought the recommended Orion XT8 Dobsonian a year ago for my 10 year old daughter (ok, and for myself!). It is super easy to setup (minutes), captures plenty of light and has been a joy to view through. I have observed the moon, Saturn, Jupiter and its moons and several Messier objects - even tracked a few satellites as they transited overhead.
Were you able to see the rings of Saturn with this telescope? How about the red spot of Jupiter? Any of its moons? And finally, do you observe these objects in a place with a lot of light pollution?
I can see Saturn's rings with my 16x70mm binoculars. Jupiter's Galilean satellites are easy with any decent pair of binoculars. You can track their positions relative to Jupiter from night to night.
Binoculars are definitely the way to go for a beginner. Spend 12 months using the naked eye and binoculars to learn the entire night sky that's visible from your location. With the aid of an astronomy book and star charts, you'll learn all the constellations and the names of the major stars in each, plus other interesting objects in each constellation (Messier objects, variable stars). Binoculars also bring out the different colours of many stars. Supplement this with background reading on the targets of your observations and other nearby objects.
During this time, you'll also be able to learn many of the most prominent features of the moon's surface, as well as easily being able to identify the planets (although Mercury can be a challenge and Neptune requires large binoculars and even then will just be a speck of light), and you'll get a feel for which constellations are visible in which seasons. Learning the sky like this is very satisfying and is a great precursor to buying a telescope. Your binoculars can of course be used for other purposes too.
As casual astronomers are generally most interested in the moon and planets, I'd recommend buying a medium-sized apochromatic refractor as a first scope. A high-quality 4" (100mm) one with a good mount can be had for under $1000, and will give stunning views of Saturn, Jupiter and the Moon, even in the middle of a large city. Other planets and the brighter star clusters and nebulae will also look good.
Unfortunately, the pairs that I have are all no longer produced. If I was in the market today, I'd probably look on Craigslist for some high-quality second hand binoculars. That way, you can go and test them in person after you've researched them online, and you should be able to get more for your money compared with buying a new pair.
For astronomy, you want a large objective lens:magnification ratio, because the higher the magnification, the dimmer the view. For daytime use, this doesn't matter, but for looking at faint objects at night, light-gathering power is everything. Get this ratio at least up around 5, or ideally 7, so 7x50mm binoculars would therefore be better (and lighter) than 10x50mm. I'd start with those before possibly getting some larger (e.g. 15-16x70mm) ones, or just moving straight to a telescope.
> Were you able to see the rings of Saturn with this telescope? How about the red spot of Jupiter? Any of its moons?
I obviously can't speak to the OP's light pollution, but if they were above to observe Messier objects, seeing the rings of Saturn, Galilean moons and the red spot of Jupiter would be no problem.
Great summary article for beginners. Ed's been reviewing scopes for as long as I've been in the hobby. His advice is sound.
The best advice I can give beginners is to get out to a dark sky on a moonless clear night and enjoy the wonders above you. Maybe watch for meteors for awhile. That only costs you time and effort. No equipment needed.
I've got mixed feelings about astro apps and phones/tablets. Sure their handy but I often see people looking at it instead of the night sky. While your looking down or trying to move your device around to orient it a meteor goes overhead. But you missed it jacking with your phone.
Also your night vision is affected by that phone/tablet screen - every time you look at it your pupils constrict letting in less light (unless you put a red filter over the screen). generally it takes 20 minutes for your eyes to become adapted to the dark. And 3 seconds looking at a bright screen wipes out that adaptation.
Infrared: Most amazing experience I ever had looking at the average clear night sky was wearing a pair of night vision goggles. Seeing all the extra stars (100x more) in the sky as I turned my head around allowed me to see the sky in a way I never would have imagined possible. Highly recommend it.
Excellent advice. I just sold off most of my astronomy equipment except for my first telescope - an orion xt8 - and some mid-range plossl eyepieces. If I did it all over again i'd buy everything used off astromart.com (no affiliation - it's just the best place to find good used astononomy gear). Seriously though - join your local astronomy club, try out members' telescopes and use their telescope library if they have one.
I've had several small telescopes, but my favorite turned out to be my first: a 4.5 inch newtonian reflector on an (no motors) equitorial mount, with upgraded 35, 25 and 10 mm focal length plossel eyepieces.
A small refractor on a camera tripod is too frustrating, and a small cassegrain on a computerized mount often is too much fuss to align and set up.
Explanation: an equitorial mount has an axis that points at the north star (Polaris, or more accurately, the celestial north pole). One you learn to set it up, it's pretty easy to just "eyeball sight" over the shaft-bearing at Polaris and call it good enough. When the planet or other object you are looking at drifts west, you turn a knob a little bit and it is re-centered.
Plossel eyepieces have 4 lenses, vs the 3 in a "Kelner". Minimal "rainbows" (chromatic aberration), and you don't have to smash your eyeball (or worse, glasses) onto the lens to see (eye relief). There are better eyepieces. Be prepared to spend at least 4 times as much, though.
The 35 mm focal length gives you the widest field of view in a standard 1 1/4" wide eyepiece, so you can actually find anything at all (and brightens dimmer objects), then, you can swap other eyepieces in the same series ("parfocal") without refocusing (much) to get higher magnification - 10 mm is the highest in my set.
One thing he didn't talk about is clock drives. They're essential for photography, but they're also good for keeping the scope on target if you want to let other people look through the scope. Especially at higher magnifications, the thing you're looking at will move out of the field of view in a few seconds without a clock drive. The one disadvantage of Dobsonians is you can't put a clock drive on them (well you can, but it requires two motors instead of one. And high magnification is not really the point of a dobbie anyway).
Today's hobbyist telescope mounts have incredible precise stepper or servo motors, many with optical encoders so precise that they know exactly where they are pointing to. I don't think you can get a clock drive anymore.
I agree with most of the points here. There should have been an additional section on choosing the right mount. There's the cheap AZ mount which makes it easier to locate an object but is too painful to use while tracking it.
The expensive EQ mount takes a little bit of practice and frustration before you can use it well. It makes it difficult to find an object, but tracking an object is a breeze.
Go for a stand AZ/EQ with a motorized GOTO unit if you can afford it. It 'll save you a lot of time looking for objects.
Binoculars are handy, but I wouldn't get anything cheaper than the Nikon Aculon series (usually $80-$120; they used to be the Action series). Sharp optics, wide apparent field of view...
I have dabbled with simple whole-sky night photography with a DLSR and wanted to do more (yes, going straight against the no astrophotography advice from the article!). But as the article shows, there are simply so many options and permutations of equipment!
I would love a simple (and very approximate) web page with a few sliders and check boxes that said I have budget range X, and want to do Y and Z. It will say: "you need the following ... and these will be nice ... " And you can click "I have these", and it will go "Okay, then go and add this."
This goes for a few other grouped-purchase hobbies/undertakings. I entered similar befuddlement trying to get a reasonably sound field recording setup. There's a lot of opinion in these areas, perhaps a general "recipe" engine would be good to allow people to submit their codified advice.
After attending and then volunteering at my local observatory for a few months, I pulled the trigger on a Nexstar Evolution 8. Tons of fun to let people choose what to look at on the iPad and the tracking keeps me from having to make adjustments every minute when we zoom in on Saturn to see Titan.
Here is a nice mount for those wanting to do Astrophotography without a telescope. The problem with using long exposures without a tracking mount is that the objects being photographed is always in motion wrt. to where you originally pointed the camera and you end up with star trails. This may not be a problem if you are using wide angle lenses to photograph a large chunk of the night sky.
One of the most useful things that I did when I started out in this hobby was get a login to 'AstroMart' and bought used equipment. Amateur Astronomy is like buying Gym equipment. Everybody wants to do it and will buy fancy equipment but most will not use much of that (myself included). So you end up with a lot of very good used equipment available for sale. It can also be a very very expensive hobby, hence reselling some of your equipment to feed your habit is a common event. Astromart is a sort of self regulated auction site for used astronomy equipment. I personally bought a 10 year old telescope 12 years ago which I can still resell today at the price I bought it then.
The most useful advice I see on here is to get something that you will actually take out and use. Binoculars (7x50 or 10x50) or a good small apochromatic refractor (80 mm or less) with a decent alt-azimuth mount. Learning the common constellations, locating the north star (if you are in the northern hemisphere) etc.
The following site will give you the list of dark sky locations in California.
For those in the Bay Area, Henry Coe State park near Morgan Hill/Gilroy is an excellent dark sky site. I saw the Milky Way again in all its majestic glory after 30 years here. Camp out there for a night and you can have a great time stargazing. Just try and find a cloudless, moonless night for best experience. Learn to read the Clear Sky chart for each location and plan out your trip.
Its a fun but addictive and expensive hobby. So beware.
After being trapped in this hobby for years now, I've finally settled on (for the time being) a nice 10" RC from GSO/Astro-Tech, as well as an ES80ed and SVQ100-3SV and a Losmandy Titan mount. While not specifically a mount for beginners, it is a nice choice considering the RA and DEC axis comes apart to reduce weight and it doesn't use a proprietary mount control protocol like some companies -- Looks in the general direction of a certain high-end red-colored mount manufacturer
I wanted to combine several interests and acquire something like the Sony QX or Olympus AIR, which have lens mounts, with a computer based program and display (OLED eventually) for capturing night skies (and general exposure exploration). But I found none of the available systems have much versatility. Is there any affordable system useful for this purpose? I know some SLRs and high end 4/3 cameras have APIs, and hacker oriented devices like the PI's camera have potential.
I am a first time buyer and spent months comparing scopes, talking to people who owned my top choices, etc. Finally settled on Celestron Astromaster 140EQ. It is just fantastic to setup and quickly get seeing - an important factor for first-time hobbyists. Also, a must-buy is the Celestron Astromaster lenses kit which just increases the quality and quantity of views immensely!
I wish I had come across this article earlier. Recently bought my first telescope: a 6" reflector with EQ mount (Celestron Astromaster 130 EQ). While the images are superb, I find it very hard to find my desired objects in the night sky. The finderscope on the unit is either useless, or I don't know how to use it correctly.
I am looking at buying a telescope that I can mount to my son's playhouse, and leave it outside year around. We live in the midwest, so there is weather.
I was thinking of something like the coin operated ones that you see at tourist spots. They are pretty expensive. Anyone have any info or done something like this before?
Are there "amateur" remote observatories? I'd be happy to control a telescope on a mountain in Chile or something over the Internet, rather than trying to screw around with a physical telescope in a city.
There are no mentions of motors or automated tracking in this article. I've heard from multiple sources that they wished they had a motorized rig, is there a reason this is not recommended for beginners?
Any Meade, celestron or skywatcher robotic mount can connect to a computer using a serial RS232 interface.
I recommend a Skywatcher mount, because those mounts can be completely controlled by software and there is a very good opensource project for this, called eq-mod.
Astrophotography requires more experience with the telescope handling, a more stable platform and usually the best beginners telescope for observing isn't ideal for photography.
For photography you should plan at least $500 for a tracking mount, you might start even with the cameras lenses or a small refractor telescope. "Barndoor" mounts are a good alternative for not too long focal lengths.
Photographic mounts for the recommended 8 inch newtonian would run at $ 1500+ and require precise setup.
The good news is, that modern digital cameras with interchangeable lenses are pretty capable for astrophotography, so if you own one of those, there is no reason not to try it. So the strong warning in the article was to set the proper expectations.
Couldn't you use manual tracking at first? The steadiness of the tracking isn't so important if every individual exposure is short, and most cameras have a continuous mode so you can take many thousands of photographs. I've successfully stacked hand-held photos using Hugin:
You will probably need a camera with raw support for this to work, because each individual exposure will be extremely noisy, and any in-camera noise reduction will destroy too much detail. You will probably also need at least two bright stars in frame for alignment to work.
And if you have a huge number of images you can also keep only those with low atmospheric distortion:
That could work - and I am a strong believer to try everything, even if the equipment at hand is not "officially capable" of doing the task. If one does that in the proper spirit of experimentation, this is great and you learn a lot and can have tons of fun. People who have no astronomy experience might though think that you can just take photos as you see them in the web or in magazines.
Astrophotography as a concept isn't hard, just like photography isn't hard; compose, expose, focus, fire.
But just like, say, wedding photography the actual execution to create good results requires a lot of experience and expensive kit. You can catch some passable images of the night sky with a basic SLR and lens just like at Aunt Maud's wedding, but beginning star-watchers see those magnificent photos of galaxies in magazines and to avoid huge disappointment it's kinder to set expectations at the outset.
If you don't know how to use a telescope, you probably don't know how to get a telescope to track along with the Earth's orbit according to elevation and get an accurate long exposure photograph.
Plus, we're all spoiled by photos made by people with multimillion dollar telescopes... so the end product will be shit probably. There's some cool things that can be done wide angle but those have been done to death.
It's not. If you have a decent camera and clear skies, you can begin learning now, and have something half decent by the end of the night. Additional investment: 0$. Most important, remember that this article is an opinion piece. There are other (IMO, better) opinions.
I used to love to go out at night with my 10" reflector and see a point of light magnified to... a point of light. For variety, I would look at binary stars to see... two points of light. Sometimes, I would search for nebulae and galaxies to see... a fuzzy patch of light. Optical astronomy is such fun.
Now, alas, the light pollution is so severe that all my points of light and fuzzy patches are severely washed out.
So I sold my telescope and took up scuba diving. It was all fish and coral, fish and coral, until a few years ago. Now it's no fish and fuzzy white patches that used to be coral.
The former coral looks like nebulae and galaxies through light pollution in my 10" reflector.
Haha... I took up scuba diving after astronomy too. Maybe there's something similar in wanting to see stuff for yourself, rather than television or photos. Coolest thing I saw was a star disappear for a few seconds as it was occulted by an asteroid.
Yes, that's quite an elitist response... Just don't... listen to this advice. You only live once. Try what you want to try, enjoy with what you want to enjoy. You can always "don't" (i.e. stop) if you won't be happy, and do some other things which makes you happy...
That's quite an "I haven't read the article" response. The author doesn't absolutely forbid dabbling with astrophotography, he simply says that it is very hard, not suitable for beginners, and backs it up with good arguments.
I was referring exactly to that part/paragraph of the article. In fact, the author even says that it is harder for professional photographers (compared to beginners).
Even with a telescope your human eyes are limited to planets and the moon, that's it. Forget about seeing galaxies with the naked eye, unless you have a 1-meter diameter telescope. All other objects are basically points of light. Artificial satellites are really fun to see, but also points of light.
But a 2006 DSLR (EOS400) that I found in the garbage, connected to a cheap newtonian telescope can capture 1000X the detail your own eyes can see. Is your telescope too small? no problem. Just increase the exposure or ISO, you cannot do that with your eyes.
I've seen comets moving in real time. Tracking satellites, resolving detail on the ISS, the moons of Jupiter and Mars, incredibly detailed nebula, and a freaking quasar, all this from my window in the middle of the city, with the highest light-pollution.
One advice I have is, try to get a scope that's no more than 15 kg. More than that, and it's a hassle to move.
And get a computerized robotic mount. They are expensive (~800 us$), but awesome. No point of getting a 15-century instrument today.