A few days ago I took my first ever astro photos with a friend, it's nothing spectacular but to me they look freaking amazing, it's crazy that this stuff is thousands or million of lightyears away and we manage to see the shape of it from Earth. Being able to take pictures of it is even more crazy. I started with this hobby very recently and I'm loving it.
I would like to ask for some questions to improve the quality.
We have to work with a rather old equipment:
- a Skywatcher N200/1000 with star tracking mount but no GoTo;
- a Canon EOS 700D;
The main issues are:
- it's difficult to focus the camera. The LCD display of the camera shows almost nothing, the eyepiece of the camera is a bit better but still quite dark. I could focus first on a bright star and then reach for the object, but without a GoTo system I would need to focus the camera on a star first, remove the camera and search for the object manually, which means resetting the focus I did for the camera and adapt it to my eye. Is there a better way to manage camera focus?
- Is there a way we can get a bit more zoom when using the camera? I cannot use eyepieces when camera is on, so I can't zoom, but I heard that a Barlow lens might help in increasing the zoom even for the camera, would you recommend it?
- What app/software do you use use to plan and log sessions? Now we're using Stellarium + Telescopius, which are good for planning but not much for logging.
Thank you in advance!
u/HariSeldon11 — 25 days ago