Stars / Astronomy / Astrophotography / Telescopes / Astro

That's a small aperture high ISH focal length
Best for planets and the moon I would think.

Did you get any eyepieces?

These. Through one I can see things

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Nice. I'd start on the moon. It moves fast but will give you an introduction.

Then maybe use something like the app Sky Map on android to find Jupiter and Saturn.

Also, use the moon to calibrate the little sighter scope on top

Up in the Yorkshire Dales last night. I expected it to be more in the north, but it was east to west, with the 2nd photo directly overhead. At one stage it was like an angel, with a perfect body and huge wings. It was all quite moving. It was one of the reasons I bought my campervan 4 years ago.

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Wonder if an infra red moded DSLR would take better pics

Well, it works.

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That could be an album cover. V.nice!

I was out sailing in the Irish sea last night, which meant we had incredibly dark skies and the borealis were very vibrant, even with the naked eye. However it's difficult to take a long exposure photo, handheld, on a moving boat (also, I can't tell from the thumbnails on my phone whether I'm selecting the sharper or blurrier versions)

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Clear skies here tonight, gonna take my phone and quadlock tripod mount out to see if I can get anything.

Nothing, just a lot of Brisbane light pollution looking south. I got a pretty shot of the sky tho', aren't phones amazing these days? Astrophotography mode on the Pixel is getting better and better.

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Oh how I wish I had decided, after all, to take my 10mm lens with me to North Wales this weekend. The 28mm lens is nice but cannot hope to capture the huge display we saw on Friday night.

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Awesome!

What's amazing is that second photo shows probably ten times (probably more) as many stars as humans can actually see.

There are only about 10,000 stars visible to the human eye in the entire sky (both hemispheres), regardless of how little light pollution there is.

Oh how I wish I had decided, after all, to take my 10mm lens with me to North Wales

You took the most important visual equipment - eyes and brain. Plus the best socials.

A lifetime memory - achievement unlocked.

These are fantastic, well jelly!

wow! those are amazing!

Some great photos on the thread

3rd of June, praying for clear skies

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Oh shit, that is very kewl

When I was a little kid, I looked up at the skies and loved how small I felt and how wondrous the universe is, but TBH I lived in West London and London's sodium glow reached me there and I couldn't see that many stars.

When I was older I tried to see the Northern Lights in Iceland, and failed, and I tried camping more towards Winter, but cloud cover took care of that.

A decade ago I got really close to buying a telescope, but I didn't have a car at the time and I lived in a high-rise flat, it would've needed to be small enough to carry on a bicycle so that I could ride out on a dark night, scope and bivvy bag... that didn't happen, the compromises too obvious (a scope so small that it can be carried by bike is not much better than a great pair of binoculars).

But I've the money, car, and inclination to finally buy all the things. I've time at night to do this, I'm happy nerding out on the software post-processing, and to refine a workflow... so I'm going to buy myself a scope.

I'll schedule some time off around a new moon, will go camping in mid-Wales or Scotland, and I'm going to go look at some stars. Though it will be more than that, I've identified places North of London that I can drive to, stargazer car parks and meeting points, so I can track the cloud conditions over Winter and will leave the scope in a ready state that I can put it into the car and just go when the conditions are good.

Of course, this being me means I'll buy something ridiculously nice against all advice that a first telescope should be cheap. Time is what I feel, time passes, and I want to maximise my joy when I have time. Time is scarce for another reason, this is England, and the cloud cover is real. So for the time and opportunity I have, I am aiming for maximum joy or maximum chance of capturing great pics.

And just to make things really expensive, I want the whole thing to weigh under 15kg and to fit into 2 bags/cases, so that it is possible to consider travelling with it, not around the UK as that's easy already, but for the times I go to the USA or Canada, the times I'm in Scandinavia... a good scope that is highly capable and yet small and cheap enough to travel with?

What I want is mostly wide field and deep space imaging/photography, but with some visual planetary capability on the occasion that I want to enjoy the sky without staying up all night.

• The travel / lightness / smallness stuff = refractor, capable of fitting an airline carry-on sized bag/case.
  
• The wide field / deep space stuff = 300-500mm to start with.
  
• Planetary stuff = barlows, but needs a good enough scope that can handle the magnification without too much false colour.
  
• Imaging stuff = low focal ratio, anything approaching F/5 is great, though below F/7 is all good.
  
• Mount = needs to be good to handle up to 5 minute exposes, though obvs I'll be stacking the images to improve quality, don't really want to be carrying counter-weights as the size and weight both count against travel scenarios, so I'll prefer a heavier harmonic drive over a lighter mount plus counter-weights, besides the lack of mucking around balancing will mean getting to visual or imagining sooner.
  
• Camera = needs a mono sensor to take total less time to get a decent outcome.
  
  

And that... is one hell of a shopping list.

Initially started with looking at a RedCat paired with a ZWO AM3, but it's a lot of money for high portability without really bringing the quality, and the planetary visual is third class at best.

This being me, I've "settled" on "highest quality with most appeal to a secondary market" and this ends up being a Takahashi FSQ-85EDX paired with a ZWO AM5 mount, and I'll include the ZWO ASiair and camera just to make this all work.

The spend here is roughly 50% on the scope and 50% on the mount (factoring in the tripod, guide computer, and power for that into the mount part).

Another 50% disappears into the adapters, coupling, eyepieces, and camera, and I think I've found a hobby more expensive than cycling!

No idea when it will all arrive, because I haven't ordered it yet... the research to get this far has taken weeks as evidenced by the incredible spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kMhttidtu3FQILAXbFg6pt0xUWzmBMl0ZDb28ZXyDQs/edit?usp=sharing and the system chart for the scope https://takahashi-europe.com/assets/uploads/SYSTEM-CHARTS/EN/FSQ85EDX_system_chart_2023.pdf which initially looked like the imagination of a crazed person but now seems to be an extremely helpful chart.

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Fantastic and a spend way past my capacity.

You'll still have to spend ages on learning systems and setup so good luck.

I'd have got a cheaper imaging scope and then a second more appropriate scope for planetary viewing.

If you are looking at mono cameras have you considered your filters (true colour, false colour. What about filter wheels, manual or automatic. Electronic focussers.

You've planned an awful lot so far I'd pick a target with a single set of equipment and spend the first few months learning how to image that. Otherwise you are trying to learn multiple workflows at once with lots of new bits of equipment

I'm spending an extraordinary amount of time learning from others, via astrobin.

Target is M42 Orion Nebula, though I also would like the Leo Triplet if possible (M65, M66, NGC 3628).

Once I'd settled on the scope I chose to pay the £2.25 per month to Astrobin, my research method is "follow the beaten path", so I'm looking at the equipment other people are using, and trying to understand their choices, and why certain things are needed.

The mount... ugh, none are ideal, my ideal is a little lighter weight (~3kg) and a little more capability (~10kg)... but either they have to be heavier to carry more (i.e. the AM5) or they have to be compromised (hybrid harmonic drive), or they have to be wildly expensive (RST-135), or they have to carry less (AM3)... or compromised multiple ways (HEM15)... and this is before factoring in software compatibility, etc... I found forums for almost all mount manufacturers, and even spending more on the RST-135 doesn't buy decent software support, hence I've opted for an extra 2kg of weight for the widely supported and most widely used ZWO AM5.

The camera is the one thing I've not decided on.

I will get a simple light pollution filter, and probably a ZWO camera, and I'll be using this all with APT ( https://astrophotography.app/ ).

The big question seems to be:

• Mono, all pixels capturing a colour, but requires filter wheel, more cables, more software work at time of acquisition, more weight, but arguably faster acquisition as more pixels working at once.
  
• Colour, 1/4 or 1/2 of pixels capturing a given colour, nothing else required, less control over the output, easier to begin with, lighter, but arguably slower acquisition as fewer pixels working at once.
  
  

I've been reading things like this https://www.astronomolly.com/2018/07/processing-lrgb-images-with.html but I already understood the science behind it, mostly I'm looking to understand what I'd need to physically take out when stargazing (as it's always going to be a car journey, turn up and tear down, plus it's all more weight to carry). The question of whether I can get away with not using mono is there... it avoids a lot of complexity on top of this all being a new field to me that is already complex.

So I'm deep in the FSQ-85EDX + Colour vs FSQ-85EDX + Mono comparisons (those links will only work for AstroBin subscribers, but this link shows all photos by that telescope) of photos and people's story of acquisition and integration times. At the moment it seems inconclusive... so I am verging on choosing the colour one as simpler + lighter.

Colour will obviously simplify a lot... and it also means I can push questions about filters and colour wheels further into the future... though I would need to buy another camera then too, so the risk is exactly that, a colour dedicated astro camera seems the better starting point, but I know the mono is technically more capable.

I really hoped to use my Sony E-mount cameras... and technically I could if I wanted to control it manually as none of the software can control it as there are no ASCOM drivers that would let me use that. There exist ASCOM drivers for Canon and Nikon, but I don't own those brands. It seems DSLR astro photography is dominated by Canon and Nikon, so I may as well buy a ZWO camera and simplify my setup a lot in the process as then I can just tell a computer to take 300 x 5 minute exposures and I can read a book in the meantime.

I'm avoiding focusers for now... am very open to a ZWO or Primaluce one... but up to this point the scope can go from imaging to visual within seconds by just unthreading one assembly and putting the other on... but as soon as I add an autofocuser I will need a camera for that, and all of this is bolted on, and the ability to quickly swap one set up for the other depending on the conditions at the time is much reduced.

I'll likely need to acquire images over many nights... but if the forecast changes (and we are in highly variable sky conditions being in the UK), at least I could whip the camera off and enjoy a cup of tea and slew to a few visual things before giving up on that night. Once I introduce an autofocuser and what is needed to make that work, I'm committing wholly to weight involved and the extra cost... I can defer that for now.

If you are planning to start imaging over multiple nights then a temperature controlled camera would definitely be a good idea.

Given that you've gone with a quad scope to start with, your colour correction is there and realistically I'd be surprised if you would see the difference between a well set up OSC camera or a mono camera without real pixel peeping.

My head is spinning! Look forward to seeing what you get up to with it.

I looked into putting a proper astrophotography rig together and came to the conclusion that I didn't have the money, time or energy to learn all the new stuff I'd need to do it properly. Please post lots of updates!