Posts Made By: alan orr

Hi,
I have ~$1600 I can spend on a CCD camera if it makes sense. I was thinking used market. Wondering how much better this would be for short as well as long exposures than my Canon 50d? My short exposures are at 30 seconds and long exposures at least 5 minutes. This is with a Nexstar 11" GPS SCT with some light pollution (i.e. I can barely see spiral arms of the whirlpool galaxy with 30 second exposures ISO 3200 on reasonable nights).

I am weighing the trade offs with purchasing the CCD camera versus the Explore Scientific 6" refractor with the Celestron gc-5 (sp) mount.

In many ways I am newbee to the hobby. Thanks for any guidance and help!

Alan

Hi,
I am wondering if I mount to a pier without fine leveling adjustments will it work for astrophotography? In other words, I have no way of leveling the pier after it is set in the concrete (but do have electronic levelers). On a tripod currently, I am able to track for a few minutes without declination guiding with PHD. I would like to do the same on a pier (but better) and wondering if this limitation will hamper this goal of getting polar alignment sufficient such that declination guiding can be turned off. I have an older fork mount (declinationn guiding challenges). If would be great to find out before I put the pier in the ground/concrete.

Thanks for looking,

Alan

Hi,
Wondering if there are any advantages of using eyepiece projection over a reducer for wide field astrophotography? I am using a small CCD with ST-8300M camera. Specifically, I am wondering if I get a wider field with eyepiece projection versus a reducer with the same focus travel/tube length to the CCD? If the tube length in back of the SCT is too long it will limit the visible sky since I am using a fork mounted F/10 SCT.

Note: I am looking for a wide field but using the Meade 3.3 CCD reducer requires going past the point of focus travel unless I add an extension tube.

Thanks,

Alan