Astrophotography Gear

[nighthound]

A few members have requested I post some images of the equipment I use for shooting astrophotography. I'm not sure where this really belongs but since I shoot with Canon cameras I thought I'd post this here.

By shooting in prime focus with my telescopes, I'm essentially replacing my lenses with a telescope that offers higher magnification, larger aperture, better light gathering capabilty and in the case of my refractor, color corrected optics. My Takahashi Sky 90 is uded for the purpose of widefield imaging with APO(apochromatic or color corrected) optics. The Sky 90 is a 500mm FL scope that when using the field flattenner and focal reducer ends up at 407mm(f4.5). It's "fast" focal ratio makes it ideal for night shooting. The Sky 90 is a Flourite glass doublet, which means it has two main objective lenses that serve to reduce most of the chromatic abberation or false color halos that shooting bright objects like stars and the Moon introduce in exposures.

The larger of my scope is a 10"(aperture) Meade LX200R that's 2500mm in focal length and offeres a focal ratio of f/6.3 when using the reducer(f/10 without it). This scope requires some knowledge of collimation or aligning optics or adjusting the internal mirrors. Really easy after doing it a few times. The smaller scope(Sky 90) does not require alignment(unless knocked around) as it has no internal mirrors.

LX200R on Losmandy G-11(German equatorial mount):
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y67/Nighthd/Astrophotography/Astro%20Equipment/lx200r.jpg

This image shows my previous 10" LX200 fork mount set up whith the Digital Rebel piggy backed on top for super widefield night imaging. This allows the mount to track or compensate for the earth's rotation and eliminate star or object movement during long exposure.:
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y67/Nighthd/Astrophotography/Astro%20Equipment/scope2.jpg

And lastly is the TAK Sky 90 refractor with the 20D mounted for prime focus. This is a small scope that produces amazing widefield images.:
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y67/Nighthd/Astrophotography/Astro%20Equipment/tak90-1.jpg

If you have any questions I'll be glad to answer them.

NH

[Robert]

Thanks very much for showing this equipment! I'm sure there is quite a learning curve associated with Astro photography, and the gear looks very expensive. Perhaps some day if I can complete my SLR gear, I'll have a go with an entry level scope.
The images you've posted are fabulous. I'll be watching for more.
BTW, I am curious, is it possible with a "high-end" enthusiast scope to bring into resolution the surface of the moon. Is it possible for instance to see the equipment Nasa left, or does that require, as I'm guessing, extreme professional gear?

[MGlennn]

Cool.........thanks for posting this :D

[Rudi]

That's a nice setup you've got there NH! I have a good friend of mine who has been lusting after the Sky 90 for several years now, one day he will finally decide to buy one. :)

Myself, I have a TeleVue TV-102 for visual observing, also a TeleVue Ranger (brass tube) for travel, and there is also an older Celestron C-8 (fork mount) that has been spending a lot of time in the box lately (the TV-102 is that good!).

Most of my photos are wide-field piggybacked shots, only because I do not want to open that can of worms labeled: "prime focus astrophotography"! I do not take it that seriously (yet) :D

Hope to see more of your astro work.

[Kevin]

Add me to the list of intrigued forum-mates! One of my dreams since I was a little kid is to have my own image of Saturn. I've at least seen it through my telescope but haven't pursued trying to photograph it yet. Seeing it was a huge thrill, as was seeing Jupiter for the first time.

I'm anxiously awaiting more of your shots!

[nighthound]

Thanks everyone.

Robert, it's not possible to see objects the size of lunar landers, etc. from earth based telescopes. That's 240,000+ miles away but amazing surface detail can be seen and photographed under hi mag through telescopes. It's easy to forget sometimes that those objects that look like rocks are actually mountains. A number of the craters would take over an hour to cross at 60mph in your car.

The equipment can get costly but some nice images can be taken with much more modest gear. I started out by simply hand holding a digital camera to the eyepiece of my 5" Meade refractor. I then moved up to attaching the camera to the eyepiece(afocal) to help eliminate shake and blur.

Rudi, the TeleVue scope are excellent instruments and I've looked long and hard at them for years. I do own a TV dielectric diagonal that I'm very happy with. Please post some of you PB ar wide field shots.

Kevin, I have done some planetary imaging, I'll post some soon.

NH

[Jonathan]

Excellent! Thanks for the images. This is quite the setup and its neat to see the images that follow