Advice for Newcomer - Forums

Hi! I'm fairly new to the astronomy and astrophotography game. I am looking to purchase a new telescope as I want to begin deep sky photography, but I'm a little intimated and over stimulated by all the options and I don't want to make a mistake purchasing something that may not be want I'm looking for.
My current telescope is a Celestron Astromaster 130EQ. I have a few lenses that came with it, as well as a few more, including a barlow lens I purchased in a kit. I also have a T-Ring adapter for my Canon T5i. I was looking into purchasing The Celestron NexStar 6SE, but then read that it may not be the best scope for deep sky astrophotography. Next I was looking at the SVBONY SV503, 102ED F7, but am still unsure if that is something that will be suitable.

If anyone has some suggestions on a good starter telescope for deep sky imagery that would be greatly appreciated!

You seem to be making the mistake that almost all of us have made when starting this hobby, thinking about telescopes and cameras and forgetting the most important element of all: the mount.

Seriously, the mount is the most important thing of all. The usual recommendation is to get the best mount you can afford, then a small refractor (something between 80 to 100 mm) and use the camera you already have.

The other thing you will need is patience, a lot of patience. This is not an instantaneously satisfying hobby and can be very frustrating even for experienced users.

PS: what you call lenses are eyepieces and have no use in DSO astrophotography.

Agree, from a hardware perspective the mount is critical and is the limiting factor for what optics you can then put on it. I'd focus on that and use whatever camera + telescope / lens you already have. You will learn a LOT.

Don't forget processing is a huge part of AP. I go back and re-process stuff captured with "inferior" old equipment and surprise myself every time with how much better things are than my last attempt at processing because I have better processing tools and skills. As you learn processing you'll identify things about your equipment that you want to fix and may like or dislike. This will guide your future purchases. But you don't know what you want yet so I wouldn't focus on anything but the mount initially.

Thank you for the insight, I hadn’t realized from the research I was doing that the mount was the key. I will start focusing on that as my next purchase then for sure. I also hadn’t realized the eyepieces are of no use in the astrophotography, but it does make sense considering the set up of camera and the view finder. Maybe that was what I was having issues with before when trying to attach my camera.
I do have a fairly good image processing software as I have a background in photography already, so I should be able to navigate that part hopefully naturally.

Are there any particular brands or mounts I should start looking at? I can see by a quick look online that when focusing on astrophotography that you want an equatorial mount, and I’m assuming a motorized one would be ideal?

*edit* I already have an EQ mount, it’s just not motorized, but I believe there are options to add on to the mount to make it motorized. Is this not a good mount to use for astrophotography? “manual German equatorial mount” by celestron is what I currently have.
sorry for all the questions I’m just not entirely sure I understand the differences and what makes a good mount vs a poor one.

1- the best mount you can afford like others have said (good mounts always have excellent resale value if you ever decide to give up the hobby; they are a good investment)

2- if you want a new scope, I suggest a decent 80mm refractor (another big mistake a lot of us do is to go out and buy a big scope to learn AP with)

3- a good camera, if you want a dedicated AP camera would be like the ZWO ASI 294MC, for example. I am suggesting the color version (MC vs. the MM) since you won't have to mess with filters, filter drawers, filter wheels at first). At most, you may need a UV/IR of light pollution filter depending on the camera you get and your sky conditions. There are many good cameras out there, but I would avoid the larger sensor ones for now.

4- software- both acquisition and processing software. Again, a number of good choices out there. I prefer NINA for acquisition and PixInsight for processing. Like others pointed out, this is a long but fun road to travel. Time and patience are required but you will get there like all of us eventually do.

As you as you have a decent computer, these items should get you started.

Best of luck and welcome to the world of AP!

Welcome to the club.

If you tell us what your pocket book can afford, i'm sure you will get a lot of good ideas from everyone hear.

There's a lot of potential information that can be said, so feel free to ask specific questions if they come up.

As Mentioned, a good mount is important! You want equatorial as it will keep the object in the same orientation as it moves across the sky. A very common and popular mount is the Skywatcher EQ6-R Pro, but budget can make it hard for this one. Many will say a rule of thumb for most mounts is to keep the payload from exceeding roughly 50% of the mounts payload capacity for photography. Visual can get away with occasional backlash or other faults for reaching the capacity.

Be patient with your polar alignment

The higher the focal length, the more the image will see any tracking errors (or lack of tracking), so lower focal lengths are more forgiving and often recommended as where to start. As you increase the FL, you will need to incorporate guiding, through a guide scope or off axis guider.

Your T5i is just fine for starting out! An intervalometer is a great addition, but I assume you have one with your background. Learn how to take proper calibration frames: Darks, Flats and Bias, will be important as well. Later on if you stay with it, you can invest in a dedicated camera, Color would be less technical than Mono as mono you will need to deal with the different filters. Also adding the cooling feature is recommended if you do go dedicated.

As for refractor scopes, aiming for a triplet will provide better optics compared to a doublet, as the latter may still have chromatic aberrations.

As for some accessories, there are many. You may want to look into a light pollution filter depending on where you live. They make some that clip into Canon DSLRs or 1.25" or 2" ones that thread into your nose piece (often 2") or a filter drawer. If you encounter elongated stars near the edges of the image, you may need a field flattener for your telescope. Also if you encounter dew/frost, a dew heater is needed.

I hope this was some help!

Clear skies!

Don’t get intimidated by all of this. The point of a hobby is to be a pastime. Get something basic (any of us can make a recommendation), and realize that the effort it takes to master things is part of the hobby. You won’t be bored! I got pretty good for a beginner within one summer. But I’m still learning a lot after three years. Isn’t that the point? The hobby can be expensive as we all decide to upgrade to try this and that. But it’s still cheaper than a boat! And it’s a pursuit that has a social element, which you are finding out right now! So read the forums, make a choice, and go forth!

A forum on the interwebs is a good way to get information but nothing beats talking to real people. If you haven't, look into astronomy clubs. There are many that are doing virtual meetings for imaging groups. It's great to get on a call or meet in person and chat about things real-time! And join the non-imaging meetings as many imagers attend other meetings. Highly recommend what you're already doing: ask before you buy anything! Simplest thing would be toss a camera on a tripod with a wide lens and take some constellation scale images and see what you can learn from the processing. As mentioned, calibration frames are important and the processing steps are going to be pretty different from what you're used to.

Thank you all for being so welcoming and helpful. I’m super glad I joined here and started asking questions before impulse buying!
right now my budget is fairly tight, so anything that’s super basic would be ideal, especially just to get me started and learn the basics. Maybe it’s best to start somewhere small to learn the ropes and figure out what I’m doing.
move also been looking into a local astronomy club and will be emailing them about membership too. I’m sure it is easier to learn first hand in person, especially because with my current equipment I haven’t had much luck seeing anything other than a few stars planets and of course the moon. I was getting the idea that my telescope wasn’t powerful enough to see deep sky.

300 to 800mm is great for medium wide photography. 1500-2500mm (and above) is getting better closeups of DSO.

So my Williams Optics GT71 is 320mm with flattener and makes images like this...

https://www.astrobin.com/vuvphn/?nc=&nce=

...and the Celestron EDGE-HD 925 (no flattener needed) is 2350mm...makes images like this...

https://www.astrobin.com/h7iefe/

So lots of decisions to make. I might suggest a wider scope to start. It's so much more forgiving with adjustments being slightly off and almost always produces tight, focused images. When that becomes second nature, you can move to something stronger. But it will introduce a few all-new issues, as the very slightest misadjustment (or winds aloft) will show up as oval or streaked stars, blurriness, and every dang fault in the mount.

Plus, a terrific wide scope can be had for a lot less money!

Brit:
Thank you all for being so welcoming and helpful. I’m super glad I joined here and started asking questions before impulse buying!
right now my budget is fairly tight, so anything that’s super basic would be ideal, especially just to get me started and learn the basics. Maybe it’s best to start somewhere small to learn the ropes and figure out what I’m doing.
move also been looking into a local astronomy club and will be emailing them about membership too. I’m sure it is easier to learn first hand in person, especially because with my current equipment I haven’t had much luck seeing anything other than a few stars planets and of course the moon. I was getting the idea that my telescope wasn’t powerful enough to see deep sky.

With a tight budget you can :
1. Buy nothing that you don't already have as a photographer (a camera + a lens + a tripod + an intervalometer) and start by doing landscape night photography (milky way, constellations, meteor showers, etc.). You will already learn a lot about planning, navigating the night sky, focusing, image processing,... and, unfortunately, light pollution. If you have 60 bucks buy Alyn Wallace's book.
2. Use the same equipment and add a small star tracker. With that you can do quite a lot already (almost every Messier objects) as you can see if you search images by equipment on astrobin. You'll learn polar alignment, calibration frames, image stacking and processing. You'll already have hours and hours of work and a lot of pleasure (and pride).

From there, in a 6 months or 2 years time, you could think about where you want to go. There are many different roads one can take.

Clear skies
Pablo

PS : to explain the importance of the mount vs telescope, I often exemplify it with Adromeda galaxy which is 3 times wider than the moon. So to see it, you don't need a big telescope / focal length (you see the moon with naked eyes, don't you?) but a long integration time to see something that is too dim to see. Hence the importance of tracking object very accurately for a long time.

With a tight budget, Pablo said it well.

Star trackers are great for DSLR and lens combos, and can often get them relatively cheap on the used market or occasional sales. Perfect item to get into the tracking world of astrophotography.

The app Photopills (I think $10) has a handy calculator that will let you know how long of an exposure you can get away with while using a given camera and lens set at whatever focal length, while also taking into account the minimum declination of the area of sky you're imaging. I use this all the time when I use the Move Shoot Move method.

Brit:
move also been looking into a local astronomy club and will be emailing them about membership too.

Brit,

What you said here I think is one of the best things you can do. Back in the day, we had an astronomy club hear in southern California called OPTAS, 150 members+ strong. We would always tell anyone interested in getting into the hobby to come out to the site, you don't need to be a member to go to a club site and just see what everyone is using. There's a really good chance that everyone will help with all your questions, and you probably see setups from the very basic to the more advanced setups. I would highly recommend getting out to a club site if there is one even remotely close to you.

In your same shoes, I'd simply buy a T-adapter for the camera, make sure I have proper backfocus, and start taking pictures immediately. Even 1sec exposures that you often move your mount to realign. This allows you to start astrophotography now while deciding on what mount to pick, gets you into stacking and processing. The 130 will be so much different than a camera lens or small refractor (also consider mounting the camera with lens to the mount and taking exposures matching your lens, again using the mount you have now to keep your target centered.

You'll gain a deep respect for your soon-to-be-purchased mount by doing this by hand now, yes, but more importantly you have almost everything you need for astrophotography already. Go! Have you searched for photos using your scope and a similar size camera?

I have decided to try and work through what equipment I have currently, and learn what I can achieve with them as they are. I have my set up now as my astromaster 130 eq, with a newly attached motor drive, my tring adapter with my barlow lens and an svbony light pollution clip inserted into my canon t5i, as well as my intervalometer. I've researched images taken with the same telescope I have already, mostly of the orion nebula, to see what settings other people are using and what they are doing to achieve the image. So the only thing I'm not 100% sure of now is the differences, or I guess the timing of taking "darks, bias and flat" frames. I've seen some explanations on how to take them, but do I have to take these shots in between each shot of lights? Like say I aim to take 100 lights, should I be taking a shot of dark every 5-10 light shots? Or am I able to take the rest after I am finished shooting all lights and the settings I used have been established?

Brit:
I have decided to try and work through what equipment I have currently, and learn what I can achieve with them as they are. I have my set up now as my astromaster 130 eq, with a newly attached motor drive, my tring adapter with my barlow lens and an svbony light pollution clip inserted into my canon t5i, as well as my intervalometer. I've researched images taken with the same telescope I have already, mostly of the orion nebula, to see what settings other people are using and what they are doing to achieve the image. So the only thing I'm not 100% sure of now is the differences, or I guess the timing of taking "darks, bias and flat" frames. I've seen some explanations on how to take them, but do I have to take these shots in between each shot of lights? Like say I aim to take 100 lights, should I be taking a shot of dark every 5-10 light shots? Or am I able to take the rest after I am finished shooting all lights and the settings I used have been established?

No, you could do all of it at the end of the session or before it begins or even on another day (but flats should really be taken after the imaging session is complete). With a DSLR like yours make sure you take the bias/darks in total obscurity and that includes the viewfinder.

Thank you! I tried it out last night but unfortunately didn’t have much luck. I wasn’t able to see any stars on my live view finder on my camera. I tried different settings, trying to raise my ISO and even the explore time just trying to see anything at this point but I couldn’t focus on anything. I’m not sure what I was doing wrong. I tried to base my settings off of like 30 shots @ 15 second exposures, ISO 1600 but all my images turned out black. I then tried to raise my iso to the highest just to see if anything would show up at all but I couldn’t get it going. I figure it is a focusing issue, but I’m not sure exactly what I could be doing wrong. I swapped out my camera for a 6mm eye piece and was able to see the Orion Nebula for the first time which was exciting, just a little disappointed I couldn’t photograph it! Hopefully I have another clear night this week to try again.

Brit:
Thank you! I tried it out last night but unfortunately didn’t have much luck. I wasn’t able to see any stars on my live view finder on my camera. I tried different settings, trying to raise my ISO and even the explore time just trying to see anything at this point but I couldn’t focus on anything. I’m not sure what I was doing wrong. I tried to base my settings off of like 30 shots @ 15 second exposures, ISO 1600 but all my images turned out black. I then tried to raise my iso to the highest just to see if anything would show up at all but I couldn’t get it going. I figure it is a focusing issue, but I’m not sure exactly what I could be doing wrong. I swapped out my camera for a 6mm eye piece and was able to see the Orion Nebula for the first time which was exciting, just a little disappointed I couldn’t photograph it! Hopefully I have another clear night this week to try again.

It looks like a focus issue.
Try your equipment during the day, focusing on a distant tree or building. It will be warmer, easier and less frustrating (you wont loose "clear sky time").

Try your equipment during the day, focusing on a distant tree or building.

Yes, I have tried that-and everything works fine. The first day, before attempting at night I attempted and was able to take pictures of my neighbours roof. This morning I was able to take pictures of a distant tree. But when I tried to photograph the moon it wouldn’t come up on the camera. I even tried to swap out for my eyepiece, line everything up, see it focused-albeit very faint as it’s lower to the horizon right now, about an hour away from setting, but still, once I put my camera back in I couldn’t get it to focus. Again, hoping that it was just a tricky target because of the time of day. I will try again tomorrow in hopes of figuring out the issue