Equatorial Mounts For Budget Astrophotography? 85
Posted
by
timothy
from the rubber-band-and-hope dept.
from the rubber-band-and-hope dept.
Timoris writes "With the Perseids approaching rapidly, I am looking for a good beginner's motorized equatorial mount for astrophotography. I have seen a few for $150 to $200, but apparently the motor vibrations make for poor photographs. Orion makes good mounts, but are out of my price range ($350) and the motor is sold separately, adding to the price half over again. Does anyone have any good experience with any low- or mid-priced mounts?"
Just a DSLR (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're on a tight budget, but want to capture the Perseids, put a DSLR on a standard tripod. Wide shots, say 18-55mm lens, you can expose for 30 seconds or so without noticing any earth rotation in your field. Take a bunch of exposures, and use a program like the free Deep Sky Stacker to align them into a final image with total exposure time equal to all the shots combines. I haven't taken any like this for meteor showers yet, but you can get some stunning shots of the Milky Way, and some of the bigger objects in the night sky. If you use a narrower field lens, like 100mm, then you might only get 10-15sec exposures, but just take several hundred and let the stacker program turn them into awesome.
If you want a motorized mount for astroimaging you get what you pay for.. A cheap one will have poor periodic error and vibration. I got a now discontinued LXD75, but due to the cheap plastic gears it's made with, I wish now I went with a more expensive EQ6 to get more accurate guiding.