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Hello All, I am looking at getting into astrophotography and just using a telescope in general. Do you guys have any recommendations on what type of telescope to get? I was looking into the Celestron NexStar 6SE or 8SE. I am open to anything that works well on both ends (viewing and photography). Cheers, Max |
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| What telescope you get depends on a lot of things. First of all, what's your budget? Also, what type of AP do you want to do? Milkyway? Lunary? Planetary? Deep space objects? All of the above? What type of AP you want to do dictates what type of telescope would fit your needs best. Then the chosen telescope dictates what, mount, camera, and filter(s) are appropriate to pair it with. |
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Notwithstanding not knowing your budget, whether you already own a DSLR, what you most want to image, etc, my advice would be to get a star tracker first. This will allow you to take a number of great images and give you a chance to learn whether or not astrophotography is for you, without breaking the bank. Using a star tracker will give you a chance to learn polar alignment, object acquisition and how to track, at a much "friendlier" focal length than most telescopes. I wish you all the best as you start out on this wonderful hobby. CS Brian |
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The Nexstars, althought good scopes, come with alt-az mounts. Those are great for visual or planetary but useless for deep-sky (unless you use a rotator but that's expensive and rather uncommon). What you need is a telescope on an equatorial mount. Now what scope and mount really depends on your budget and what you want to do. If you just want to try astrophotography and you don't want to invest much, a portable mount such as the Skyguider Pro or the Star Adventurer with a small refractor or DSLR lens will probably do. If you want serious beginner gear for astrophotography, a good refractor with a decent mount is a good start. And if you want to do visual as well, maybe a Newtonian is your better option. They have big mirror well suited for visual and fast optics for astrophotography. The problem with those is that they are heavy and you will need to invest in a good mount. They also need to be collimated (it's easy) and a coma corrector for astrophoto. No matter what you choose, my two pieces of advice are : astrophotography is a fantastic hobby, but you should know that it can get expensive. And your budget priorities should be : Mount first, camera second, scope third. A bad mount is the worst, no matter how good your scope or camera are, it will be the first bottleneck. I hope this helps, if you give us your budget, it will be easier to help you. |
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I'd recommend a 50-80mm refractor like the William Optics Zenithstar series. I'd also recommend a German equatorial mount like the Skywatcher EQM35, a modified DSLR (if you need to acquire a camera), and the ASIAIR Pro. The ASIAIR will avoid the need of a laptop and has plate solving to help you acquire targets without frustration, and also has a nice polar alignment feature. I would also recommend a guide scope and guide camera to enable you to get long exposures and dither. This all seems a little daunting and won't be "cheap" but remember if you don't stick with this hobby you can resell your equipment. |
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| I recommend you start with a book on astrophotography. There are very good books for beginners that will teach you everything you need to know. They also help you to think about which objects you actually want to photograph. Because as others have already written: The object decides which telescope is useful. |
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I think Nexstar 8SE is a good choise for visual observing if you want a compact unit with goto and large aperture. A dobsonian is the default recommendation, but I personally spend too much time trying to locate objects. I love goto. You can get a wedge and turn the SE mount into an equatorial mount for long exposure astrophoto, but in that case I would strongly recommend to get a small refractor and attach it to the fork mount. It is hard to get pleasing photos with 2000mm focal length, and I suspect that this mount is designed mainly for visual use. It might be a bit too flimsy to support a C8 for AP, but it is probably good enough for a 80mm refractor. There are few hard limits to what is possible. Only different levels of frustration. If astrophoto is your first priority, you are better off with a german EQ mount. |
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I am a very beginner, I have one general suggestion : do not go for “I’m gonna try” stuff, you will most probably outgrow it very soon and unable to re sell it. This hobby is costly, don’t make it even more costly with stuff that you will overgrow soon. As scope, get a Newtonian ... a TS Photon will introduce you to this magic world with a totally affordable price, good overall quality (I would not go over the 8” as then some tolerances will shrink) and a good support service from TS for whatever you might need. if you instead want to step up a bit for price and aim for something more particular, go for the Explore Scientific Maksutov-Newton. I have no experience with this last telescope (while I have a bit with the Photon, you can check my pics as what you can achieve with this scope being a total n00b), but I have to confess that I will almost surely give it a try before to own a costly apo. Most than all : have fun ! |
