Jeff and Cohen, an article on the Canon 60Da which is specifically made for astrophotography. http://www.imaging-resource.com/new...-your-camera-is-here-canon-eos-60da-announced As with the EOS 20Da before it, note that while the Canon EOS 60Da can certainly be used for shooting regular pictures as well, they will tend to have something of a reddish cast, and hence it's not really recommended to do so. The EOS 60Da makes more sense as a secondary body to accompany your existing Canon SLR, rather than as your primary body. So I gotta look at something else. Too bad this can't work like a normal 60D and then activate a special mode to become the 60Da.
umm...okay? lol, is this a conversation you three are having, or are you asking somethign about astrophotography?
Special Mode! Drew, in a nutshell, the brownguy needs a new camera...and since he just bought a Celestron, we were talking about him getting the Astrophotography version on the Canon 60D. We need to really start think about your needs. Aren't there different filters you can buy for the attachment that will do the same thing? Like the "moon" filter. I haven't googled anything yet. Hopefully someone knowledgeable on this subject will chime in.
oh bummer, yeah i sorta suspected in my mind there might be funny colors, i was just thinking it was something that can be tweaked easily in post. A old coworker of mine had a 7d i want to say or maybe it is a normal 60d and he's pulled off some 'science book' quality photos imo.... http://www.flickr.com/photos/excaliber2013/ but there is a lot of work on the backend to stack images and crap like that for these shots.
the problem isn't add on filters, because you still have to hit the sensor through the Ir filter that is on the camera, and in the first link, they've tweaked it to allow a little more ir in that would screw you over on earth with the good 'ol sunlight.
I don't have the moola to splurge like you nerds on cameras. ;P I am seriously thinking a T4i 650D because it's an affordable DIGIC 5 camera that is going towards mirrorless so the body is also smaller and lighter. http://www.getawaymoments.com/2012/08/milky-way-astro-time-lapse-with-canon.html That's not bad quality for zero post-processing timelapse.
honestly knowing your needs and style of usage, i completely agree. Some big ass new gen camera doesn't necessarily net you a better picture. I think you going that route is miles better than a first gen 5d, as the dynamic range on the t4i will destroy the classic 5d, and despite being crop sensor, I would bet money that the t4i will have less noise.
Agreed. Get the T4i. The flip out screen will come in handy when mounted to the Celestron. It is small/light enough and will do what you want to keep you happy for a while. It won't hurt your pocketbook either.
I don't believe it will, there's not enough light to show up. regarding filters, there's nothign you need, for the most part. The processing you'll do after the fact will give you the filtering you need. You'll need an auto tracker on your equatorial mount, so it can follow the image through long exposures. Most people I've seen end up taking 100 or so images on 8-30 second exposures, then overlay them using different programs. Do you already have the scope? Edit, you'll need a filter if you're doing any photography of the sun. Note, though, these filters are pre-magnification, so they wouldn't effect the camera at all. I've seen people that try and run filters through the eyepiece...magnifying the light amplitude of the sun by 400x will straight up crack and destroy pretty much any filter, along with causing instant blindness
Yes the 4SE Celestron has tracking. I could get the GPS add-on to make setup faster, but maybe another time but I'll probably just learn to input its coordinates manually. I have moon filter, the T adapter to make it fit to the back of the telescope, and another adapter to make it fit on top of a Barlow eyepiece for magnification. I have my Nikon adapter ring and Matt has his Canon adapter ring.
also, I'm guessing you know this, but for those who don't - you'll never see the gas cloud looking pictures like you see in books. The vast majority of those are hubble images taken outside the atmosphere. The only way to get the reds and greens to show up is via processing. I've looked at different galaxies all the time, you can't even make out the spiral galaxy of Andromeda through a 450x magnified 10" dob scope, it looks like a smudge mark from a pencil / eraser combination (this is one of the largest / brightest objects, it's visible with the naked eye on dark nights)
I'm sorry...man purse? He does drive an Audi. :eek3: So, what you're saying, is that there is no way to "frame" the shot? You won't see shit using live-view on the camera? What if we were taking pics of a full moon? Neither of us have done this before and we were planning on heading up to JP's and using his dob as well. Any input is appreciated. Thanks Drew!
A dob most likely won't work. You can come over and see mine if you want to try and get a reference, I'm still waiting on parts right now though so mine's in pieces. The dobs have a very short focal length, usually around F4 or so. The equatorials have a longer length, usually around F8.5. The attachment is also a lot different, there's no good way to mount the camera on a dob style. Coupled with the short focal length, objects HAUL ASS across the FOV (field of view), so much so you're always constantly moving the scope. It would never work for a long exposure, even if you had the goto dob (which I don't believe JP does). The moon would be a good start, i was going to recommend that, but i'm honestly not sure how the tracking would work with somethign so close. Typically the trackers are positioned by setting up 2-3 poitns in the sky, usually main stars like Vega, Polaris, etc. The triangulation pin points the earths rotation and sets up the goto drive in that manner. Point being, I don't knwo that you could take a 30 second exposure of the moon through the scope without having some blurred distortion. The tracking is such a pain in the ass to setup, I've honestly never used it. It's easier for me to use a laptop and spotter scope to find what i'm looking for, then direct the main scope that direction. Once you know what youre looking for (and your eyes have adjusted to the darkness), you can pick out pretty much any galaxy with a magnitude less than 10 with only a 50x zoom spotters scope When are you going up to JP's? I think he has the 8" dob, IIRC, I wouldn't mind joining if i'm free and bringing my dob with me.
this is saturn at around 200x magnification. It's only a shitty cell pick, but you can see how blurry this comes out due to the speed the object travels through the FOV edit - without the cell phone there, you can see not only saturn, but about 7 of it's moons, too (none of which come through in the picture). The cassini divide is also crisp and clear Here's one of the venus / sun crossing from a few months back. The other blurry black spots are sun spots If there were an easy way to mount a camera, I'd be all over it. I even looked into eyepieces that plug into your laptop so you can view everythign through there, but they don't do magnification at all so I'd only get up to a 4-8x zoom, not with the $400 imo.
We are still in the planning stages with JP. I just sent him a text to jump in here. I was trying to use the moon phases as a guide as to the best time to go. http://www.calendar-365.com/moon/moon-phases.html This weekend is a no go. Anything after that works...right now.
I'll be out of town next weekend, but I'm game for anytime in march. Download a program called Stellarium, it's a free program with real time mapping. Once you setup your location and time settings, you can search for anythign you want, and zoom in / out. We'll sit on the back deck with the laptop and run this program (also has a night mode to not fubar your eyes) and look up to find what's near, then pinpoint it with the scope.
I've got the xt10 without the fancy tracking. Drew of course you're welcome to come up as well. The more the merrier.
awesome, thanks. I just picked up this badboy, haven't even had a chance to try it out yet. The two black bearings on mine broke, I've been waiting 5 weeks to get the replacements in, should be here next week (hopefully) http://www.telescope.com/Accessorie...Zooom-Telescope-Eyepiece/c/3/sc/47/p/8250.uts
I have a battery pack that I can charge and see if it works well because I'll be bringing my old Dell lattitude which has LPT port for the cable to connect with telescope. I may get the GPS unit for the scope to make life easier. http://www.amazon.com/Celestron-939...85144&sr=1-1&keywords=celestron+gps+accessory Then again, $170? yea...maybe not. This could be a good thing to get though. Thoughts on it? http://www.amazon.com/Celestron-Red...scopes/dp/B00009XVHZ/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
That's a nice eyepiece. I really want a zoom eyepiece as well. Nice eyepieces cost as much as the scope itself. No worries about power I can run some extension cords out.
Strayen - to be honest, I probably wouldn't invest any more in the scope you have. It's a great beginner scope to get you into the hobby, but it's not what you'll ultimately want if you get a little more serious into it. Most of the lower level rigs I've seen have a $1500-2000 mount under a $1000 scope. I would use this piece to learn the basics and if it's somethign you're really interested in, start moving forward from there. JP is right, I would invest in eyepieces now. Those are interchangeable for the most part, and you'll get a lot more immediate use out of them. If you can, I would go for all 2" pieces, they're a lot nicer than the 1.25" counterparts
unfortunately, it'll have to be late may before I have free weekend. my brother is getting married 5/11, and every weekend between now and then is booked (his birthday is 4/26, mom's is 4/20)
I am also getting close to my wedding date in June so we'll have to wait. I may have a day free here and there. Cohen needs to let me know when he is free.
Wirelessly posted (From Brian's Mom's Bedroom!: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 4.0.3; en-us; Amaze_4G Build/IML74K) AppleWebKit/534.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/534.30) Someone just needs to tell me what day. I can make myself free whenever.