Your first
astrophotography
rig
Astrophotography isn’t about high magnification!
Most folks assume you need a big powerful telescope for astrophotography. When you use a big telescope at high magnification keeping the scope “still” is tough but when you don’t zoom in much its a lot easier and a lot cheaper. “But what’s the point of not shooting at a high magnification” I hear you cry, “Surely that’d be a bit pants”. Well I hate to disagree with you but I strongly disagree with you because the big secret of astrophotgraphy is that there are hundreds of HUGE space objects which can be shot without very much magnification at all.
Rho Ophiuchi is so big I only needed 135mm lens to get this shot. Don’t believe me then check out the video below to see how I got this shot,
(FYI if you’re lucky there might still be prints of this incredible nebula for sale in the shop. Only 50 will ever be made and each one comes with a certificate of authenticity.)
From Earth the Great Nebula of Orion is twice the size of the moon and the Seven Sisters star cluster (top) is at least 3 times bigger than the moon. And there is loads more cool things to see that are simply enormous, you’ve just never seen them because they are so faint. Anyone can download the high magnification stuff from NASA’s Hubble galleries but only you can take unique pictures that reveal these big structures and you can do it with a DSLR and camera lens and a relatively cheap earth derotation device (aka a star tracker).
The secret is to spin your camera in the opposite direction to how the earth is spinning.
If the earth would just stop spinning then you’d be able to take the pictures above with a regular dslr and camera lens and this set of instructions would be very short. You’d simply point your camera up at the sky, take a twenty minute exposure and wind up with a beautiful, crisp picture of deep space. Unfortunately we need a motorised mount to hold our camera still for the full duration of the exposure while the earth spins beneath it.
How to do it (polar aligning)
- Line the mount up to the rotation of the earth by pointing the inbuilt polar scope at the North Star. You don’t need to be super accurate.
- Stick the camera on a ball head and then stick the ball head and camera on the tracking mount.
- Turn the mount on.
- Keeping the tripod and mount still use the ball head to point the camera at the target
- Start taking pictures.
The best trackers in my opinion are the Skywatcher Star Adventures. The cheapest, mini version of this device is good although I recommend its big brother with the pro pack because the extras give you more flexibility and the adjustable wedge makes aligning the mount to the rotation of the earth easier and more accurate. There are other similar astrophotography travel mounts but the Star Adventurer is the only one I’ve properly tested. Its very good. I’ve even stuck a little guide scope on it and successfully taken 30minute long subs. It is comfortably accurate to 2 arc seconds whilst guiding.
Sky Watcher Star Adventurer Pro Pack
What blows me away with these little mounts is that they track as accurately as mounts that cost twice as much. Note this version comes with all the accessories you need although if you’re doing wide angle stuff with lenses then you might also want a ball head
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Star adventurer lightweight tripod
Any sturdy camera tripod will do but if you don’t have one there are these… they are light but can only handle light little mounts that carry light little telescopes or lenses like these.
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My regular travel rig set up
I often use my canon 6d and the Samyang 135mm lens with my Sky Watcher Star Adventurer but on this occasion I pushed the set up with a 50year old 180mm APO Telyt lens and the ZWO asi294mc camera to reveal the reflection nebula M45 (aka Seven Sisters).
Great Astrophotography Lenses
Sigma F1.4 50mm art Lens
I love my Sigma f1.4 50mm art lens. It is so fast and sharp it can catch Orion nebula setting through the trees with just a ten second exposure. Perfect for timelapse…
See Also…
My new favourite mount: ZWO AM5
What can you see through a $10k Telescope vid drops tomorrow (sat) at far too early AM!
Orion in Iron (and other weird narrowband filters)
