neopj3

I'm trying to find a good telescope that I can take camping or out to the country and do a bit of star gazing and astrophotography. I'd like to find one that has a base that auto tracks and can view planets on the other side of the astroid belt. Anyone have any experience with these? Im a beginner and would rather not spend $1000, so many choices on the market. Thanks

Mark Doiron

First, pick up some binoculars--I recommend either 7x50 or 10x50. Get to know the night sky a bit with a simple star chart or even a planisphere. The book Nightwatch by Dickinson is an excellent resource, spiral bound (lays flat when observing), and includes charts to get you started with some basic objects (fascinating stuff, trust me on this). You'll be amazed what a good pair of binoculars will show you. Second, pick up a current edition of Star Ware by Harrington. This is republished every few years with updated material on buying telescopes, binoculars, and all of the goodies (You think Jeeping can be expensive? I have almost as much tied up in astronomy gear as in my Jeep!). Finally, take your observing gear out to truly dark skies. The night sky is an incredible gift to mankind, and I cannot believe the way so many are being denied it by ignorant nighttime lighting practices.

Oh a good place to buy stuff: Astronomics in Norman, OK. One of the largest mail order retailers of astronomy gear for amateurs. And they will work hard to get you into suitable gear for your needs; no pressure to oversell you to fatten their profits. They are on the web.

genesbro

Every thing Mark said here is right on the money. I would get the 10x50 for sure, used the 7x50 breifly myself and found the 10x50 much more satisfying. I have been working with astronomy since I was a kid and is what got me interested in photography. I saw would be a great scope for camping if it does all it is supposed to do for about 400 dollars. It was on ebay in one of the stores that have stuff there and has built in gps so it can autoconfigure itself for wherever you might be and then will let you choose what object including the planets that you want to find and track. All you have to do is look into the eyepiece and it should be there.

If you know how to read star charts you can get a manual equatorial mount for a lot less and then once you are on an object that you know what it is you would use it corridinates to set your scope up for the next object that you can't even see until you have the scope aimed at it.

One thing to keep in mind that a refractor style scope is much easier to maintain, pretty much will last a lifetime with no user required maintenance other than cleaning the front of the lens once in a while, less often is better than more often, everytime you clean it you are actually creating tiny little scratches that you can't even see but will add up over the years if done a lot.

A reflector can be bought with much larger aperture for less money but they will require more care and feeding so to speak.

I have used both types and prefer the views provided by the refractor. Shorter focal length is better for photography, faster lens (F stop lower). Longer focal length will result in better color correction on bright objects for viewing purposes.

Astronomics has a great little 6 inch refractor made by celestron for less than a grand that I have my eye on. I had one about that size years ago and the things you can see through that will blow you away. I was able to watch the famous Halleys' comet come into our part of the solar system on the last go round with my last 6 inch refractor. I looked like a thing from a cotton wood tree floating out in space when it was just coming into the suns power and it slowly started growing a tail as the nights went by.

Maybe now that the nights are getting longer we will have to have a combination trail run and astronomy party out at Buzzard Canyon, talk about dark skys, wow.

jeepguy553

Dammit...I WISH I could join you guys for that night trip to Buzzard Canyon. I have no idea where it is but the possibility of doing some stargazing and astrophotography is VERY tempting.

My first scope was (and still is) a Meade ETX 60. It is IMHO a great starter scope. I didn't buy it (my dad did for Christmas a few years ago) but I doubt it was more than a couple hundred bucks. It has the computer driven tracking mount and came with 3 different eyepieces. As for viewing...well last year when Jupiter was at its closest point, I was able to pull in a GREAT view of the planet and 2 of its moons from my front yard. Now that I have a T-mount and adapter for my Olympus E420 DSLR, I can take some REALLY cool pictures of the moon and other stuff. I bought a solar filter for it not long ago and got some really cool shots of some sunspots this past summer. It was also pretty cool for this year's trip to Florida.
Here are a couple of pics...

Sunspots taken through telescope with solar filter. This was shot at about 9:30 in the morning on August 3, 2011 from the balcony of our condo in Perdido Key, Florida.


Lightning shot taken through scope the next night


Surface of the moon



I do have to say that I would like to have a larger scope so that I could take some pics of deep-sky objects such as nebulae and far-off spiral galaxies.

genesbro

Nice shots there jeepguy. I like olympus cameras myself. I used to use an om2 on my scope with a t-adapter. And took some great shots of comets just letting it ride piggyback. It sure is a lot of fun looking at all the great wonders in the night sky.

jeepguy553

Thanks man. I tried to get a shot of Jupiter last night. You could see it VERY plainly with 3 moons on one side and another moon on the other side. My camera battery was DEAD. Not to worry. Tonight I HOPE to get the same shot if the moons are all aligned the same way. This will be the first time I attempt a long-exposure shot through the scope with the scope tracking the target. The saving grace here is that my laptop can be used to control the camera and I will have a real-time display of what the camera is seeing right on my laptop screen. I won't have to touch the camera once the shutter is open...cuts down on camera vibration. Doing it this way will really help get the focus nailed down since I won't have to use the LCD display on the camera. I am thinking that I'll set the camera in MANUAL (it won't auto-focus anyway with the scope attached) then set my f-stop to match the scope (f/6.6 I think) and take a series of 40- to 60-second exposures with different settings until I get the exposure I want. If I can get the scope tracking nailed down, I may even set the camera to BULB and take a really long exposure so that the details and color will be right.

The solar filter is also known as a white-light filter. I want to get another one called a hydrogen-alpha filter. From what I can tell, the Ha filter is supposed to allow you to get shots of stuff like coronal mass ejections and such. The drawback to the Ha filter is that they are EXPENSIVE.

I love my Olympus DSLR. For the money that I spent on it, I couldn't have gotten a better camera. The T-ring for the Olympus 4/3 mount camera was a PITA to find and then I still had to get another adapter to mate the T-ring to the oddball threads on the back of the Meade scope.

jeepguy553

Just checked out the Ha filters a little more and even with one, you still have to use a white light solar filter to snap shots of the sun. The only thing the Ha filter does is allows a very narrow bandwidth (650nm) of light to pass. The lowest priced Ha filter I could find was around $1600 so it doesn't look like I'll be getting one of those any time soon. My wife would shoot me.

genesbro

I want to get a digital olympus for myself one of these days. But then again there is a new Celestron digital imager that is 1400 dollars that sounds great. If you check out clestron.com it is under the new equipment tab and it sure looks like the way to go for great astro photos. I am hoping to get me a new 6 inch scope from celestron for my birthday. Then maybe I can get the new imager for myself for christmas. I have the neximage thing and it is from more research just a web cam with a scope eyepiece barrel attached to it. It is better than nothing but can't wait to get a high resolution imager.

jeepguy553

Figured out last night that I need one of these...

http://www.astronomics.com/main/prod...roduct_id/1321

The T-ring and adapter I have are great to hook to the back of the scope, but then all I get is whatever magnification the scope provides on the back eyepiece. I can't use the Barlow lens to magnify any further. I was snapping shots of Jupiter and simply couldn't get the scope to focus well enough to get a decent shot. Sooooo...it looks like the item in the link above is just the ticket.

genesbro

Looks like a good adapter. I have one similar to that minus the ability to change the focal point by sliding it in and out. With the neximage ccd device you just insert it into the scope like a regular eyepiece even into a barlo lens. And it comes with software that lets you stack lots of images to bring out more details. I just need to get more aperture so I can get better views of the planets.