TheEmrys wrote:I have already purchased the necessary adapters to mount my camera body. Because my computer control isn't equatorial (what this exactly means, I am not quite sure), it will be mostly for planet and moon shots.
Equatorial mount means that, once you have an object centered in your field of view, the telescope can accurately track it across the sky as the Earth rotates. It's slightly more complicated to use than the
alt-azimuth mount that you are also likely to see, but it works beautifully and is preferred for astrophotography because you can keep the object in frame for as long as you want.
You have a computer control, though, so I'm assuming it has some sort of system for handling tracking regardless of the mounting.
As for telescopes, I have:
Duct Tape Dude wrote:I'm interested in astrophotography but I am really just getting my feet wet. I just recently came into possession of a scope but haven't had much time or cloud-free, halfway warm nights so far. I don't have a camera yet, and as a total noob to these waters, I'm open to suggestions about anything.
Beginner tip: let the 'scope come to ambient temperature - depending on what you have, that may take a while. The larger the objective, the longer that will take - tens of minutes to hours, if you have some big monster. Larger setups often use cooling fans, actually.
I've gotten excellent (well, I think they're lovely) photos of the moon using just a good point-and-click camera that has optical image stabilization, on a heavy, stable tripod.