This makes me wonder what sort of semi-pro astrophotography might be possible using a disassembled small cinema camera (black magic pocket 6k, for instance, or a similar priced full frame mirrorless or DSLR) with a peltier cooler or refrigerant loop heatsink attached to its back side.
How close could one get in performance to a very costly astrophotography setup, for under $10k? Not counting the cost of the telescope/optics in front of it, just talking about the sensor part.
Sorry for the tangent, but that sounds really interesting! Would you feel comfortable sharing more info about how you did the processing? Astrophotography is a hobby I've been wanting to get into and learn about, but I can't justify purchasing an expensive camera for just one hobby.
pretty sure the most expensive reddit award is worth $120, which isn't a down-payment on an equatorial drive. It might pay for 1/3 of an IR conversion on an existing DSLR camera, maybe.
professional astronomy photos is an activity where the low end starts very expensive. Basic setups are in the thousands of dollars.
Since this is a better source than the space.com article, I'll repeat this here:
For those interested in astrophotography, when asked how to get into the hobby, most astrophotographers will tell you, "don't".
The setup that he's got in the picture is very conservatively $10,000 worth of equipment. Not to mention the time spent in setup, planning, extensive postprocessing, etc. Personally, with a day job and living in a city (light pollution), I find it difficult enough to get time for visual astronomy, and astrophotography takes a lot more time and dedication. All that for something that the big scopes are going to do a lot better.
Not trying to dissuade anyone who's passionate about it. If you're up for the fun and challenge of it, you'll get some nice results for the rest of us to enjoy. :)
For those interested in astrophotography, when asked how to get into the hobby, most astrophotographers will tell you, "don't".
The setup that he's got in the picture is very conservatively $10,000 worth of equipment. Not to mention the time spent in setup, planning, extensive postprocessing, etc. Personally, with a day job and living in a city (light pollution), I find it difficult to get time for visual astronomy, and astrophotography takes a lot more time and dedication. All that for something that the big scopes are going to do a lot better.
Not trying to dissuade anyone who's passionate about it. If you're up for the fun and challenge of it, you'll get some nice results for the rest of us to enjoy. :)
I've seen some pretty impressive stuff done with a relatively cheap / simple DSLR setup.
The basics of astrophotography aren't that expensive, but it gets exponentially more expensive to meaningfully "zoom in". Because DSLRs with typical lenses are pretty zoomed out you can get away with much cheaper gear. You might look into getting a "star tracker". It's like a telescope mount for a camera; it'll keep the still relative to the stars but because they don't need to be as accurate they're far cheaper to make. They'll probably work just fine for your 200mm 2.8 lens for a fraction of the cost of a mount.
Not quite sure why this hits the front page. Most serious astrophotographers have been using similar setups for a while now, or ideally peltier cooled CCDs (like Starlite Express, Atik or QHY cameras). More recently cooled CMOS sensors (like the ZWO1600MM-Cool) have also gained popularity. It's a bit of niche market, but for long exposure photography having a cooled sensor greatly reduces thermal noise. And since the signal is very faint you often do a lot of "histogram stretching", bringing out the signal, but also the noise. In addition to having a low noise camera you also often do things like bias, dark and flat callibration, reducing impurities further. Dark subtraction is often known as "long exposure noise reduction" in consumer cameras, but astrophotographes like to do it manually. There are a lot of details to consider when doing astrophotography, but I'm always happy I can set my CMOS or CCD (own both the QHY10-OSC and ZWO1600MM-Cool) to a deltaT of -40ºC.
I know little to nothing of astrophotography, so this article comes as news to me. (I like the article, FWIW.) I wasn't even aware cooling could be used to account for sensor noise. Now my mind is actively aware of the problem and is trying to enumerate other possible means of correction in this, and other, imaging fields.
Someone once wrote they were trying to turn a bunch of cheap webcams with some nifty cooling into a large baseline telescope, I always wondered what became of that project.
As someone interested in photography and who bought a 10-inch Dobsonian telescope that barely gets used, I'll have to echo your sentiment with some modifications.
I say this as someone who has only dabbled, but astrophotography, even at the bottom end of things, takes quite a bit of work to get a mediocre image. You can get decent images from a cheap webcam attached to a big scope if you capture lots of images (or video in this case) and use focus stacking and noise reduction techniques using programs such as Registax.
It's one of those hobbies that promises improvements along the way the more money you spend, but it also rewards knowledge.
But you also need another camera and probably another mount too.
The scope is actually the cheapest component in a astrophotography setup. Probably the 80% of the cost is the mount+the camera.
Alternatively, you could use a $2000 - $4000 (used price) C14 telescope on a $4000 AP900 (used price) mount, with a $1000 planetary camera. Still a chunk of change.
The only thing you can't buy used is the apparently killer atmospheric conditions he enjoys wherever he shoots.
As a person who has spent well more than $10,000 on his equipment and software setup for astrophotography, I disagree with the blanket "don't" statement. I think the biggest cause of frustration is amateurs starting out with something like an AP1100 and a Takahashi FSQ, along with some ridiculous overpriced CCD camera they bought because it was listed as having "the most megapixels" in order to try and avoid the pains of a "substandard" setup. Ironically, however, this usually causes more pain than if the setup had been simpler in the first place. Additionally, it harbors resentment towards the hobby from the person who just dumped 15k on their bulky imaging system only to find they can't even get it to guide correctly. I operate my primary scope in a large personal observatory, but I can't rave _more_ about the amazing pictures I've taken with my cheap ZEQ25, Explore Scientific ED80, ASI 1600MM-C, and cheap set of narrow-band filters. Setup is fast, the focal length is short, the speed is (fairly) fast, and the results can be seen in just a single night of test imaging[1] for less than $2200. Additionally, new devices[2] are coming out that will make imaging even simpler!
Astrophotography and visual astronomy don't necessarily go together.
A used DSLR with a short focal length lens can take nice wide angle short exposures with just a tripod. That'll run you about $150. You can build a barn door tracker from hardware store parts that'll allow you to lengthen your exposures.
You can get a nice telescope for visual use brand new for under $500. Lots of places sell Dobsonians that are pretty much ready to go out of the box. If you want to go for a more traditional mount + OTA (optical tube assembly), that gets more expensive. Used equipment is nice because amateurs tend to take care of their optics and after the initial depreciation, optics tend to hold their value. Check the Cloudy Nights classifieds section. (Actually, just check Cloudy Nights in general, lots of friendly, knowledgeable people there.)
I put together my visual setup (127mm SkyWatcher Mak-Cass, heavy duty photo tripod, and a Stellarvue M-2 mount) for around $700 excluding the cost of eyepieces. The sky is the limit on eyepieces, but most EPs between $40 and $100 work just fine. I shopped used and watched for sales. What many people don't realize (including myself when I was starting out) is that you want to invest as much, or more than the cost of the OTA into your mounting solution if you want to get any enjoyment out of the hobby. Even if you're just doing visual work. Skimp on your foundation, and the whole setup will wobble all over the place, making it hard to see anything, and that's not fun or relaxing.
It's putting visual and photography together that gets expensive. When you want to take long exposures at high magnification, you want a really solid equatorial mount with high-resolution encoders. Those start at $1000 on the low end. You'll probably want a better CCD to image with (a few hundred bucks). Then you can get into tracking scopes (even the expensive mounts accumulate error after a while). It's not really the main scope that's expensive, it's all the stuff you need to support it.
Anyway, actually looking at your question, as long as you stay away from the low end stuff, Celestron and SkyWatcher both make fine OTAs. My recommendation is do not get an all-in-one package, especially under $400 unless it's a Dobsonian. The mount will be garbage. You can take short exposures with a DSLR + just about any OTA and EQ mount that will support the weight. (You won't probably won't get a flat field though). I'm pretty sure people also image with Celestron C8s or C10s which are relatively inexpensive.
A lot of this is armchair observations, as I've managed to convince myself to stay solely on the visual side of amateur astronomy because it's easier and cheaper. There are enough amateurs with $20k rigs that you can enjoy their nice images of all the popular DSOs without putting in the blood, sweat, and tears.
I’m about $15k in the astro-hole, and it goes a long way - about the same spec as this all in all - 14” Schmidt-cassegrain, Moravian with the 16200, filter wheel, mount, and all the rest. It all started with a little 6” scope and a cheap colour cmos imager - but I don’t feel the need to go beyond what I have. Except maybe a solar scope. And maybe a better cmos imager than my noisy SLR for planetary stuff. And maybe a new observatory.
It’s worse than having a drug habit, sometimes.
I’m not the target market for this thing at all, but at least it’s a respectable telescope and camera combo - an awful lot of stuff in this category is laughable garbage.
How close could one get in performance to a very costly astrophotography setup, for under $10k? Not counting the cost of the telescope/optics in front of it, just talking about the sensor part.
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