I built myself a barn door tracker a few years ago. It was good for tracking up to 20 mins at a time. Still have it somewhere but thinking about purchasing a proper star tracker mount. I only have my usual canon gear, 5DIII camera and landscape lenses plus a 2x extender so have a reach of about 800mm. More than enough for astro.
That seems like my route into astro; Nikon D80, variety of lenses up to around that with a 2x teleconverter. But I went for a Skywatcher eq900 alt/az that came with a variety of eyepieces and the differences are clear to a beginner like myself. I also bought the relevant attachments and a Barlow 1.5 to use my dslr with the scope even though I've only managed a few trial cable release sky shots so far to get myself accustomed with scope exposure levels. I also found that I could join the 1.5 Barlow that came with the scope can be added to the chain to img. But for required longer expo to img things other than the Moon I'll require a tracking mount at some point but by then I may have decided that a more capable scope should be bought.
If you recognise Orion, then it is a really nice one to look out for in the winter months. Look pretty much due south at 6pm and you will see it.
It is an old red giant star, so if you look at it for a few minutes and compare it to other stars, you will notice is is quite orange. It is a big different from the relatively young white/blue star, Rigel in the lower right corner.
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Orion can be a good sign post to other interesting stuff. If you follow the belt down to the left in a straight line, you get to the brightest star seen from the UK, Sirius, which is also known as the Dog Star. (Note, Harry Potter fans, and also Bellatrix in Orion). Going the other way, you get to a V which is the head of the bull of Taurus. Going the same distance again is the Pleaides cluster, where if you have any binoculars is well worth a look. With the naked eye it looks like a little cloud of stars.
If you do have binoculars and think something might be Jupiter, even low power bird watching binoculars can be enough to pick out the four brightest moons. It will not be that spectacular but look a bit like . . o . .
If it looks like it has ears, then it is Saturn.
They don't. They are known as black bodies because they pretty much absorb all radiation going into them:
Black-body radiation - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
newsroom.unsw.edu.au
www.sciencealert.com
Aye, champion, lost a lot of interest in this place, posted about it in the now locked Big Life thread
Coming up with a nice working platform like that looks a bit complicated for me. I could imagine a personal tragedy creating one of them!
They are complicated but a hell of a lot cheaper overall than a dedicated startracker mount. The coding to get the motor to turn at the correct speed was the hardest part for meComing up with a nice working platform like that looks a bit complicated for me. I could imagine a personal tragedy creating one of them!
I found one at a decent price from where I bought my scope so that could be where I end up getting one.
I'd read online that coupling the motor-pack with the set-up I have to run at the correct speed/angle was arguably the most difficult part of connecting up to track for a blur-free pic over the required duration. More personal consideration required for me to get to a basic level of imaging beyond the moon?
There is a calculation you can do to work out how long you can expose for before you get star trails etc.
Conflicting reports!Stars don’t reflect light????
According to this, they do :
Scientists prove that binary stars reflect light from one another
Stars Don't Just Produce Light - They Reflect It Too, And No One Noticed Until Now
We tend to think of stars as the objects that make most of the light in the Universe, while planets, moons, rocks, dust and gas reflect this starlight.
It's about 600 light years from us. Issues with not currently knowing its correct mass throwing distance off a bit. If it was where our sun is, we'd be inside it. As would Mars too.
I'm more of a trial & error person, the 500 rule will probably come into it for me at some point but I'm only at the newbie stage of managing an acceptable img to see where to go next expo wise.
What sort of exposure length did that img take?
Taken in 2014 from my back garden. 8 x 30 second exposures with y barn door tracker and stacked in deep sky stacker and finished off in photoshop.
Great work to create that img, it's a long, long way ahead of my knowledge, equip & capabilities. Taking an acceptably focussed img to look at & work with is my current astro stage! Our moon is probably where I am in comparison img wise.
I've watched some You Tube stuff to expand my knowledge over the last few months (since getting my scope). I'd tried a few pics with 300mm vr lens & 2x telecon beforehand but got nothing to work with in Photoshop Elements or my other camera programs. The pics were handheld in daylight so I knew movement would be a problem but all I wanted was a basic img to think about improving before heading to something taken later in the day when I had a scope.
That looks like something for me to think about. Thanks.
