The Equipment
This is a history of my equipments for both visual and photography purposes. For easier navigation on the page, you can use the table of contents to jump to the right section.
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Current astrophotography gear
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My current gear used for the astro photography sessions is somehow considered as an entry level, based on cost and complexity of other more experienced colleagues that in the business. As you will notice I’ve been building up my gear progressively and it is a low budget one.
Mount Bresser EXOS-2 EQ GoTo
I am running my gear on a Bresser EXOS-2 EQ GoTo which I purchased initially to use it with a Newtonian Bresser telescope. There are a couple of minuses this mount has like lack of computerised connectivity with the acquisition software and backlash (which I believe every mount has until you solve it).
I like the go-to system which helps me to quickly navigate to my targets. Even with the perfect polar alignment and the 1-3 stars alignment sometimes I still don’t get the target in my scope sight and I need to manually adjust the mount’s position.
Telescope William Optics GT71
The William Optics Gran Turismo GT 71 is an apochromatic refractor with an aperture (the diameter of the objective lens or the mirror) of 71mm and focal length (the distance between the objective lens or mirror and the focal point) of 420mm.
This is a very good telescope built with three pieces of FPL-53 glass which makes the 3 colours (red, green and blue) to align perfectly at the focal point. Really love this piece.
Camera Canon EOS 750D
I acquired the Canon EOS 750D second hand especially for the astrophotography sessions. For a non-dedicated, un-modified DSLR camera the results are very good. I’ve been using the camera at -5° Celsius all night without any problems. Sturdy built camera good for an entry level hobby.
Guiding Camera
In order to get longer exposure than 30-50 seconds, you will need to guide with your mount just because the rotation of Earth on its own axis will create star trails. My mount is capable of tracking by it self, if it is extremely well aligned up to 60-90 seconds. For longer exposures I need to use a guiding camera that will lock on a star and then will instruct the mount, via a piece of software, to make the necessary adjustments to keep move the mount such that the star remains in the same relative position. The camera needs to be connected to a guide scope so that the image at the right scale.
I am using a ZWO ASI 120mm camera for guiding with the SVBONY SV165 Mini Guide Tube scope. I never take them off my main scope after the end of the session so once they are installed they are there I’m all set.
Additional gear
To a minimum this is all you need: telescope, camera and a mount. However, in case you want ease up your work and to have images to high exposure, I find it best to actually use the following items.
Flattener William Optics
I acquired the William Optics Adjustable Flattener Reducer Flat6AIII together with the William Optics telescope. With this flattener the William Optics GT71 telescope will have a focal length of 336mm which gets me a wider field of view at a faster exposure time too. The purpose of this piece is to flatten the image at the corners where you would normally get some coma like visual aberrations.
Polar Align
Any decent mount has a way of allowing you to make the polar alignment, typically through an inner scope. I found it to be difficult to use because I need to look through a built in scope located at very close to the ground, which means I need to stay on one knee. Many times the ground is wet and is really not a nice experience during the start of the night to waste time in an unconformable position to align the mount with the polar star.
Thus, I chose to buy a QHY Pole Master to speed-up the polar alignment process and to ease up my life. Normally in about 5 minutes I finish with the polar alignment and then I can move to the next step with is 1-3 star alignment.
Image Acquisition
I went with the cost effective option of buying a Raspberry Pi 4 and have Astroberry installed on it since my background is in software developer and open source. The Raspberry Pi costed about 110 euros, I had to buy also a Wifi antenna addition and the software was free.
USB Charger
Cable management of the entire gear is an important aspect if you want to ease up and speed up the setup process. There are numerous options based on your budgets, however I found that a normal 60W HUB Power Charger is enough to power my camera, 2x dew heaters, Raspberry Pi and guide camera. Basically everything that I’m using, except the mount itself which is being powered by its own adapter.
Visural observation gear
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My first telescope that I was able to use to actually see something on the night sky was a Newtonian telescope.
Telescope Bresser NT-203/1000
An amazing telescope that I used mainly for astronomy observations is the Bresser NT-203/1000 telescope. I was able to see galaxies, nebulas and the planets from our solar system. Because of the aperture and its focal length, I am not advising you to start your astronomy exploration with such a big telescope because every mistake that you make, with the alignment or the focusing or the positioning of the mount will be amplified by the telescope magnification and it will ruin your experience. When you are new in this hobby, first you need a small telescope that will allow you to just point and immediately see something as a reward, otherwise you get frustrated and it will ruin the experience.