Motorising a Skylux mount.

yea, he used the astrotrac alot before he sold it, all the same I dont think that image was with an astrotrac as the landscape is not blurred from tracking ?

Thanks guys, I really do appreciate you taking the time to give me advice.

I found a motor for the bresser for €50 and I bought it,.... and yes, I know, I know!
This (hopefully) will help me cut my teeth and get started photgraphing the sky. If it doesn't work out, well... at least it will be handy for observing.

The truth is, I just couldn't wait to save up for something better, I want to get started. €50 won't delay whatever I get next by much and I'll probably know better by then, what I want , or need.

My advice, keep saving until you can get hold of a second hand astrotrac or maybe a cg5. If you go for the latter then you have the option of adding a scope later once you've mastered the wide field stuff. ..............and please don't tell me you wont want to mount a scope, you know you will eventually.

Dave G, I laughed when I read this 'cos I know your probably right! :laugh:

Thanks again,
Leo.

Leo, I didn't realise the bresser kit is only 50lids. Sure you can't go wrong. AT the very least it will show you what you can and cant do with that equipment.

Best of luck with it.

Hi Leo,
great to see you're taking the plunge into the whacky world of astrophotography.

The Dolmen shot above was a 25 second shot on a tripod
which shows you that you don't need any driven gear to begin with.
At the very least, shooting off a fixed platform first will help you learn
to get the right combination of f ration / iso / shutter speed / framing etc
without having to worry about all the setting up / polar aligning etc that
comes with a motorised setup.

I think your going down the right road with motorising the EQ3.
It's a grand solid mount and dirven it will be more than
good enough for what your trying to achieve at this stage.

As long as you shoot wide field you should with a well set up mount
like that get very good results.

As DaveG says, you'll soon find out!
I do hear Carl though and I'd have to agree to some extent,
I jumped from, literally, a home made barn door tracker to an Astrotrac.
Simply because I knew I was into this stuff in a big way and decided insted
of piddling away money buying bit's and pieces over the coming years,
I'd bite the bullet and go for the best on the market for what I wanted.
In the long run, saving myself a few years of half measures and money lost
constantly 'trading up'
I sold the unit last year for only a little less than what I paid for it so
it was money VERY well spent.
I've since decided to buy the new Astrotrac travel system and again,
it's something that will hold value because it's a specialist bit of kit.

but as I said above,
you can get super interesting shots without any big budget gear at all.
I have a 2 Euro mini tripod in the car and I've used it at the side of the
road plonked on top of the bonet for quick snaps.

(BTW, it was funny reading the thread, especially your comments as the
two boys seemed to be gone of an a tangent altogether! )

I was mulling this thread over and a thought struck me...

The folks responding here (Carl, Dave G, Frank, myself etc) have all gone through the pain of astrophotography (in its various guises - wide-field, short FL and vice versa). If you think back to your first steps along the road, I bet it was similar to my own.

You get the binos or cheapy Lidl scope. That leaves you hungry more and teaches you the basics. And I certainly made many "duh" mistakes over that time. But whilst fiddling about with bargain basement kit, you also get to learn which aspect of astronomy fits your needs. Some continue with visual stuff, other go into astrophotography.

So, when you upgrade to the next level, your decision is based on a period of learning and realising (roughly) what you want to do. And at that point, all you've spent is maybe a few hundred euro - a fairly cheap learning curve.

When you upgrade, you've already learned all the basics and those "duh" moments are reduced or elimninated. In addition, you become far more discerning in your choices of equipment and begin to learn which companies/models really are the nirvana in your particular field of interest. Of course, you then quickly realise that you paycheck would never attain that level of equipment so you learn which kit is a close second-best.

The point I'm making is that I think buying cheap equipment that is barely suitable for its intended use is actually not a waste of money. You *have* to factor in the learning process - and that is invaluable.

For Frank, that was lashing into a two quid tripod, taking some nice images, doing the research, figuring out the Astrotrac was the bees knees, then stepping up a level and producing top quality images.

For me, I started off with the 8" celestron and a Meade DSI. I took some reasonable images, realised I'd found my niche "subject" and then upgraded (over time) to the AP1200, the 14" scope and a FLI imager.

Imagine the alternative route: You have never had an interest in astronomy and pick up a mag. You figure that you can extend your interest in photography to astrophotography and off you go, do the research, head to the shops and return home with an AP El Capitan, a 20" RCOS scope and an imager with a Fairchild CCD in it. Throw in a 5m Ash Dome, a top-end PC/Laptop with a multitude of software etc.

Now, what are you going to do? You'll spend the next year at least trying to figure out how to use it all and how to get it working together - and its unlikely (with our skies) that a year will do. You'll get bored, frustrated and then sell it all (to me). A waste of time, money and effort - simply because the ropes weren't learned.

The alternative is much better - yes, there will be money "wasted" but it will not be a lot. If you're careful and choose reasonable kit, it could well be sold on. But you will learn so much.

So, I think that the actual learning part of the process is equally as important as the type/make of kit you buy. Go get the cheapy stuff, figure if this part of astronomy is your cup of tea then decide to upgrade to the mid-to-top-end stuff. You've only lost a few quid at most but you will now fully appreciate what the better kit can do for you.

So Leo - go for it and let us know how you get on. 50 quid was money well spent.

Thanks for the support and encouragement lads.

I thinks there is a learning curve that I have to go through before I spend alot of money on this.
At the moment, the wide angle stuff is what I want to do. In time, this may change, I may decide that after a while, I want to narrow this done a bit and will need a better mount and perhaps go down the scope / ccd route. I may decide that I'll stick to the wide angle stuff but want longer exposures and an Astrotrac may be the solution I'll pick, or I may decide that this is all more trouble than it's worth, and go back to observing only. Whichever I choose, I need to do a little of the basics first, learn a little of what it takes to do it and what the limitations of the kit are. I think there's no better lesson, than learning to take your kit to it's absolute limit and "wringing out" the best you can get from it. That's when I'll really know which direction I want to take.

All the best,
Leo