Stargazers telescopes

[Gray]

I've always been interested in taking the time to look upto the sky on clear nights, while being a bit bummed that i could only see miniscule things with the naked eye.

Been looking for a relatively cheap telescope to get started when i seen Newtonian 76mm at Argos for a fairly cheap price.

Anyone had any experiences with their own telescopes, which make for fascinating sights? One thing i have been curious about them is, can they actually take "pictures" to store on things like SD Cards, or is that only for the very expensive laboratory types?

Interest in this was spurned on by hearing talk that Saturn has been visible the past few nights, had a look last night and i could see a pretty large star in the vacinity it should have been.

 

[Tom]

I don't know a great deal about telescopes; I'd like to, but the night sky in Manchester is polluted to hell with sodium lighting.

To take photographs through a telescope, you need an eyepiece that can lock onto an SLR. I've seen people put their iPhones at the eyepiece and get photographs, but they're not great as the light level is pretty low.

 

[Job]

Quality is everything and you don't really need to go past 50x, that will give you a pretty good image of Saturn and Jupiter, you 'll see rings, the clouds on Jupiter and the Moons.
I use my trusty Astroscan as the guy says, quality optics and easy to use makes for happy gazer.

 

[rynnor]

I use my trusty Astroscan as the guy says, quality optics and easy to use makes for happy gazer.

Sweet - any idea where to buy one in the UK?

 

[old.user4556]

It may be cheaper to get a DSLR with a lens with a fast aperture and get the necessary tripod mount to 'track' the objects in the sky if you're serious about photographing the objects - it really depends on how close you want to get. I've looked at it briefly.

I got out the other night during this clear spell to try my hand at some astronomy photography for the first time and it came out like this:

 

[Zenith]

Amazing photo's Big, big well done!

 

[rynnor]

This ones similar to the Astroscan - Children's Telescopes - Skywatcher Infinity-76 Child's Telescope by OVL

 

[Job]

Sweet - any idea where to buy one in the UK?

No I bought it in Colarado and brought it home in a backpack, the security guys at Denver airport weren't happy, till their boss came over cos he knew what it was, they still insisted on setting it up and peering through it across the airport to check.

 

[Shagrat]

No I bought it in Colarado and brought it home in a backpack, the security guys at Denver airport weren't happy, till their boss came over cos he knew what it was, they still insisted on setting it up and peering through it across the airport to check.

but you had the last laugh with the boot polish round the eyepiece right?

right?

 

[TdC]

that's pretty frikkin awesome Big G. I especially like the latter one. care to post your aperture and shutter speeds?

 

[old.user4556]

f/2.8, 30 seconds, ISO 1600, 11mm

 

[Zenith.UK]

My Dad has a Meade LXD55 8" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and my step-dad has a Meade LXD75 10" Schmidt-Newtonian. Even though I bought Dad a planetary imager, he's never actually used it afaik.

The main things for taking clear deep planetary images is:
An automatic motorised equatorial mount for your scope, so you don't have to manually track objects.
A good magnification for your eyepiece lens.
A camera mount for the eyepiece.
A camera. A DSLR with programmable interval and taking images in RAW is great, but a humble webcam connected to a laptop by USB will do.

Once you've got your scope set up, the object in view and the camera attached, get the camera to start taking pictures one after each other so you have a number of images of the same thing. Also take a couple of black images with the cap on the lens.

Take all the images you've created and use a piece of software to "stack" the images. Stacking is a way of taking multiple images that are fractionally out of focus to generate a much sharper image.
This page shows how it works: Stacking and Processing Astronomical Images

Registax is a free of charge program for doing exactly this.
RegiStax- Free image processing software

Saturn is kind of low down in the west in the evening sky, right by Venus.
How do I find Saturn in the night sky at this time of year? - Yahoo! Answers

The bright "star" near Taurus and the Pleiades at the moment is Jupiter.

 

[old.user4556]

that's pretty frikkin awesome Big G. I especially like the latter one. care to post your aperture and shutter speeds?

If you like that, you'll love this:

Time-Lapse of the Milky Way Over the Southern Ocean

 

[TdC]

f/2.8, 30 seconds, ISO 1600, 11mm

If you like that, you'll love this:

Time-Lapse of the Milky Way Over the Southern Ocean

cheers dude, that is indeed awesome while watching that vid I was severely tempted to dig up the old photography skills 0o

 

[Zenith.UK]

I remember seeing the Ocean Sky one when it came out. It deserved to win the astro photography prize it won.

Here's another one that is in my "all time favourite" astro photography stuff. Do yourself a favour and fullscreen it.
The Aurora on Vimeo

 

[Job]

Lovely picture that, I don't think till you've gone somewhere, really, really dark and looked up at the Milky way yoU can appreciate where you are in the big scheme of things.

but you had the last laugh with the boot polish round the eyepiece right?

right?

No, I could see the rubber gloves in his pocket.