Who says dobs are no good for astrophotography

Great images shot.
Quite inspiring.

I rest my case. Bigs dobs and short exposures. No polar alignment, autoguiding or mega bucks mounts.

www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=73727

Bloody hell !!! he is using 10-20 second exposures, thats unbelievable!

I said exactly the same thing to myself when I saw the shots, Dave.

Everyone saving for the 22" dob then?

johnomahony wrote: I rest my case. Bigs dobs and short exposures. No polar alignment, autoguiding or mega bucks mounts.

John - I actually don't know of anyone who says that "dobs are no good for astrophotography". I suppose that "traditionally" thay have certainly been more associated with visual observing because of their design - ease of quick transport/assembly, lack of tracking motors and complex mounts (for ease of use) etc etc. Whether the total cost of ownership is any cheaper than any other telescope, I'm not so sure.

Fundamentally, a 22" mirror is a 22" mirror. Give me one and I'd make images like that 'til the cows come home.

The advantage of "mega bucks mount", good polar alignment, a cooled CCD, autoguiding etc and all the parephenalia associated with a fixed telescope is that I could take those images all night long whilst I'm in the land of nod. No setup, no transporting the beast around, no expensive storage/transport cases, no need to upgrade the car from a saloon to a 4x4, no mosquito bites, no busted back, no falling off ladders and brteaking my neck, not worrying about some eejit falling over/damaging my stuff ad nauseum...

But if you wanted to do even better than a 22" dob, book half an hour on the Faulkes Telescope South and you'd blow even those images out of the water. And at a fraction of the cost.

Its all horses for courses - any telescope purchase is bounded by the needs of the end user. And those needs vary considerably. Otherwise we'd all have one of these: www.keckobservatory.org/


Impressive all the same and can't wait for Mr. Lillis to get off his butt and do us all here in Ireland the honour of similar images.

dmcdona wrote: Its all horses for courses - any telescope purchase is bounded by the needs of the end user. And those needs vary considerably. Otherwise we'd all have one of these: www.keckobservatory.org/

Don't you need to purchase the high-altitude-mountain mount for one of those though? I've heard there's a long waiting time.


Having tried to get images with my Canon eos400D I'm wondering if moving it on and picking up one of those smaller no-mirror cameras might be worth-while. The 400D seemed to flex in the focuser irrespective of my rotating the OTA or tightening the thumbscrews.

Focusing through the viewfinder is also quite difficult with the scope in certain positions; an LCD sounds handy. I'm sure my problem is more to do with a lack of experience on my part though.