Astrophotography

[smoker]

One more question - the Mrs has been looking into doing star trails pics. I've seen pics on flickr where the stars arent trailing. How are they doing that as the longer the exposure would show trails - the comments on flickr say they arent using a telescope??

Can you buy motorised mounts that you can fit DSLR's to??

You don't need to use a telescope to take tracked pictures of the night sky. You can just mount a camera and lens directly on a telescope mount, or if you're feeling flush, invest in a widefield tracker like the Astrotrac or Kenko Skymemo. Most telescope mounts these days use a Vixen dovetail standard, all you need is fasten your camera to a Vixen compatible dovetail plate using a 1/4" 20TPI bolt.

If you take exposures less than 600/F seconds (where F is focal length of the lens) using a static tripod, then you won't get any trailing either as it's too short and too wide to show up.

 

[SAFC2403]

You don't need to use a telescope to take tracked pictures of the night sky. You can just mount a camera and lens directly on a telescope mount, or if you're feeling flush, invest in a widefield tracker like the Astrotrac or Kenko Skymemo. Most telescope mounts these days use a Vixen dovetail standard, all you need is fasten your camera to a Vixen compatible dovetail plate using a 1/4" 20TPI bolt.

If you take exposures less than 600/F seconds (where F is focal length of the lens) using a static tripod, then you won't get any trailing either as it's too short and too wide to show up.

Cheers mate - I couldnt really find much info on using a DSLR on the mount rather than a telescope.

The mrs is more the photographer but shes given me her old camera (nikon D70) and quite fancy having a go at getting some night sky shots - heading out tonite up to northumberland national park to see if we can get some shots of the aurora and maybe some star trails shots.

 

[Jonny]

That's a cracking photo that. Which telescope do you have?? Quite fancy getting one but dont know where to start.

Thanks, I was very pleased with it!

I have a SkyWatcher Heritage 130P FLEXTUBE Telescope, its about £130-150. It does need a table or something to put it on mind.
This was shot using the lenses that came with it. I now want a Barlow lens to double my magnification, as they are cheap.

The flex tube also packs away very nicely, if you are not using it very often.
I've only used mine twice, once i got that shot of the moon, the other time I got to see Jupiter.