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I have over the past 10 years been in and out of astrophotography more than once. But every time I have been out there I have been thrilled by the fantastic and fascinating world of the universe. But where should one start in creating a new astrophoto kit for astrophotography?
Before this experiment, I had been able to get my hands on a Meade 8″ from the 1980’s. The build quality of this telescope is amazing and I love using it. However it was constructed before computers were a thing, hence the observer needs to know his or her way around the night sky. In the image below you can get an idea about the FOV during this telescope, the narrow FOV combined with the lack of being able to upgrade with things like auto guiding makes it dreadful to use for astrophotography.
This led to considerations regarding how I would best spend my money regarding new equipment. Either buy a cooled dedicated camera or buy a T2 ring for my Nikon Z5 or something else.
The new astrophoto kit
I went with the third option to do something else – I opted for starting over and begin to craft a new kit from scratch – It will probably take me years until I am finally done, but you can follow my progress here on this page where I will keep you posted.
So what have I decided?
I have decided to purchace a new telescope mount for a more lightweight setup than the old Meade 8″. So my first addition to the astrophoto kit is apart from my trusty Nikon Z5, my old Tamron 150 – 600 mm f5.6-6.3 lens, is a brand new skywatcher – star adventurer GTi with the kit tripod. It has received nice reviews from several different astrophotographers.
The reasoning behind this is that this rig holds the potential to be upgraded over time with auto-guiding and a small telescope, like the skywatchers Evolux 62ED or something similar. And in the end even a dedicated astrophotocamera.
This will make my life much easier when I have polar aligned the setup I can run everything else from my phone ensuring good quality images – for postprocessing. In terms of observing I have made a comparison image showing again the Pleiades with the new setup, see below
Wating for the new equipment to arrive
Now that the order has been put through all I can do is sit back and wait for it to arrive for me to put it to the test. I will make some reviews of the new astrophoto rig as soon as I get it.
Follow up.
January 15th the sky tracker finally arrived however the weather behaved as one might expect when getting a new astrophoto kit – it was completely overcast. But managed to get some data in the end.