What Types of Astrophotography Do You Do?

[Lee Jay]

This seems an opportune time on this new forum to ask such a question. I'll provide the first answer. Primarily, I do “deep sky” astrophotography. Most of that is through lenses on a DSLR, with about 30% of images taken with the same DSLR attached to one of several telescopes. I have been gradually widening my fields of view to the point where I now end up with terrestrial foregrounds in my shots as a feature rather than an accident, i.e., I do more nightscapes.

One thing I have not seriously done is planetary imaging. However, I do occasionally take images of the full disk of the moon through a telescope. That’s more a case of shooting the thing that is destroying the nice dark sky I wish was there instead of fighting it.

Because deep-sky and nightscapes do benefit greatly from dark skies, I primarily shoot from country sites that are less than hour’s drive from the moderate-sized city in which I live in mid-latitude North America. (As close as I will come to pinning down my actual location.) The few times I have tried to do such imaging in my backyard have been excercises in frustration with little reward.

Your turn!

Planetary.

 

[Downunder]

I do, but I use a CMOS astrocamera (ZWO ASI533MC Pro) tethered to a laptop, not a DSLR. Scopes start with a little 70mm quad APO (475mm f/6.7), Maksutov (825mm f/5), and a larger scope (250mm aperture / 3000mm focal length). Sadly haven't done much as the weather has been abysmal for the past 3 years, a significant climate change is clearly happening here.

Main interest is to NOT do what thousand of others are doing, so I go for objects others overlook, mainly galaxies, small nebulae etc using the reach of the big scope (3000mm).

 

[BuckeyeSkyGuy]

I use a ZWO 533MC-Pro cooled astrocamera for most of my work these days through the telescope.

With the 135mm f/2 Samyang, I still use my FS modded Nikon D5300. Gets me 6.6° x 9.9°, which is great for framing the really big objects (i.e. M31, Rho Ophiuchi+friends, North America+Pelican Nebula). And it's hard to beat f/2.0 shot wide open.

I am looking to get an APS-C mirrorless, likely a Nikon Z50 or similar.