Building a Telescope Rig to PHOTOGRAPH GALAXIES

it's time to build a new kind of deep sky astrophotography rig one design for galaxies what do I mean by that galaxies tend to be a lot smaller than wide field Nebula targets the ones I traditionally shoot through my wide field refractors galaxies are a lot smaller and require more magnification more focal length and in some cases a different style of optical instrument to do justice in this video I'm going to put together a brand new deep sky Astro photography rig that was designed for capturing small distant galaxies celestron has sent me something very cool Star Ozona has sent me something very cool and unless you're brand new to Astro photography I think you'll have an idea of where I'm going with this [Music] please let me know in the comments if you think I am too old to be wearing a backwards hat it kind of feels like I am I want to get this out of the way first - no one's paid me to do this video not sponsored no promotional anything they have no idea no company ever tells me what to say and what to tell you guys okay let's get started I pulled in a lot of heavy equipment from the garage and I'm gonna set it up down here in the basement just so I can go over it with you guys and you can look at it in detail the first thing is the celestron cg XL mount do you remember that mount I talked about early last year that's the mount I'm gonna be using for this system because I do need a heavy payload capacity and also it's not currently being used for anything I think the idea is and you know I see a lot of astrophotographers do this chucks astrophotography is one great example he has dedicated separate rigs for different styles of astrophotography the whole kit is built ready to go for those situations as opposed to disassembling the configuration and changing it up constantly my god the amount of times I have spent taking apart rigs and setting them back up I'm hoping that this rate can stay together as a single unit in the garage so I simply have to pull the whole thing out I'll have a rig that's ready for galaxy photography for wide field nebula for wide-angle night sky shots dedicated rigs for different styles of photography let's get this heavy monster cg XL set up right here so you can take a look at it this has got to be the heaviest tripod on the planet so if you didn't see my video early last year with this mount it is the celestron CG XL an observatory class equatorial mount with computerized go to it has a 75 pound payload capacity and that's the main reason one of two main reasons why I'm using this mount for my galaxy rig the telescope I'm going to be putting on here is about 30 pounds which is pretty heavy as far as astrophotography telescopes go I did have some great experiences with the CG XL over the summer I mounted a big FLT 1/32 refractor on it one of the heaviest refractors I have I had great success with it at track good I love star system through ass commas controlling it through my computer I can tap into features like pulse guiding plate solving all that fun stuff so that's gonna come in handy when shooting galaxies at that high magnification I did have that one fumble Knight where it just was acting up and I really think that I had a clutch loose or something the video I made called I made a mistake that was the last time I used this mount so I just hope it's ready to go by the time I get it outside okay I need to put the counterweight on this before I attach the telescope I haven't even taken it out of the box yet I did look at a promotional video and you know looked at the specs of the telescope and everything but other than that the whole thing is a new experience for me telescopes always are so much bigger in person than they look in the pictures this is the celestron Edge HD 11 inch F 10 appling attic Schmidt Cassegrain telescope it has a focal length of two thousand eight hundred millimeters that is some serious magnification what are you doing down here if you watch this channel you'll know that a telescope like the celestron Edge HD 11 is completely different from what I normally use I'm more of a wide field refractor guy fast F ratios short focal lengths whereas this 2800 millimeter focal length F 10 is a completely different animal altogether there's a lot to consider with the telescope like this especially for someone like me that's kind of stuck in my old ways and what I I know what I like shooting at 2800 millimeters focal length is super high magnification so perfect for small galaxies but with that comes a lot of potential headaches the biggest one meaning that when you're at that magnification all the sudden your mount becomes so important the guiding accuracy tracking accuracy of the mount if it the payload capacity isn't high enough for a big heavy sculpt like this you're gonna have issues seeing conditions come into play when you've got an aperture of 11 inches there's so much that changes when you get into this realm of astrophotography telescopes that being said this telescope is actually quite versatile for an astro photographer it's kind of a if you have one scope and you want to explore different areas this is actually a pretty good one to use for that because let's say you shoot at the native focal length of 2,800 millimeters at f10 camera at the back here you're maximizing that full magnification of the scope get those small objects or you could use a reducer to bring it down to f7 I know stars ona has a reducer for this telescope or you can go crazy and get hyper star which attaches the camera to the front corrector plate of the SCT and then you're shooting at F 1.9 at around 500 millimeters and it's then it becomes basically in an 11 inch rasa for lack of a better description because then you're at wide field superfast imaging so it's kind of versatile and it lets you go in different directions not to mention you could put an eyepiece and just use this telescope visually that's something I haven't mentioned yet in something I've not explored on this channel is planetary imaging so planetary whether it's just visual views of the planets high-resolution views it's a completely different style of imaging and this is the kind of telescope you would use if you want close-up views of the planets and the moon for that matter the other really important thing that you have to keep in mind is which camera are you gonna be using with this telescope your image scale becomes very important this is unlike all of the other optical systems that I use typically my refractors are from set anywhere from 300 to 800 millimeters that's fine for the image sensors on the cameras that I have the ASI 294 MC Pro the 533 those are all a great fit in terms of image scale for those sensors in the focal length of the telescope all of a sudden the image scale changes drastically with a scope yes and to be honest the cameras that I currently use aren't such a great fit for this because they have such small pixels you generally want larger pixels when you're shooting at this magnification so what that could mean for you if you're shooting with say it's a DSLR or some of the color CMOS cameras that you've seen me use on this channel the images might look a little soft at that focal length even though you can sharpen them up in post-processing it's just not going to be the same so it should be interesting to see if the images do look a little soft and if so if it's kind of a deal-breaker for me where I consider using a different camera for this system all of these reasons start to add up and kind of make you realize why I tend to steer people in the road of a smaller refractor at least in the beginning yes this telescope is going to be able to do things I've never done before some pretty exciting ones like small galaxies and planets I think as you see me use this system in the backyard you're gonna see me squirm a little bit and go through some frustrations I'll probably edit most of them out to be honest here's a look at the objective of the Edge HD 11 this is an SCT telescope but the edge version is a little bit different than say the traditional c 8 c 11 that celestron does this one has the edge optics which is said to flatten the field better it's designed for astrophotography so pinpoint stars to the edge of the field even with a large imaging sensor like a DSL a full-frame DSLR for example obviously for galaxies I'll be using it with the camera attached to the back of the telescope to utilize that native 2,800 millimeter focal length but also I'll try out the fast star system which is a installing hyper star the camera on the front with another attachment so I can use this telescope at F 1.9 and around 500 millimeters so that's a lot of aperture 11 inches of aperture if you're unfamiliar with the hyper star system it's something that company called star Ozona developed years ago and people just loved it I remember the first time I heard about it it was actually Dylan O'Donnell who was swore by it and I was like that can't be real there's no way you can turn an F 10 Scopes into an F 1 point but it's real so this is what the hyper star system looks like comes in this nice Pelican case and oh I see a filter drawer on the front there I didn't notice that at first that's great convenient spot for filters so high what hyper star Dodge basically like I said there's a glass lens elements here that converts the f10 scope into F 1.9 have no idea how they pull that off but these things aren't cheap either this end you thread on to the front corrector plate of the SCT and this end is where you thread your camera and so it just sits on the front and I'll attach it to the scope next this is how you put the hyper Starr v4 on the Edge HD 11 and this whole process kind of freaks me out to be honest but this locking ring comes off here and then you just slide out the secondary mirror a little grip here to pull it which is kind of cool to just pull out the mirror like that think of a thickness of it so secondary mirror is out now I can thread the hyper Starr v4 right on the front very carefully okay found the thread it's gonna add a lot of weight to the front of the scope as you can imagine especially when the cameras on here - now that's one good thing I didn't mention about this 11 inch aperture it's actually better you can use a DSLR body or mirrorless for that matter like the RA right at the back in your and I actually still have lots of you're not covering as much of the objective of say an 8 inch version okay so there it is there and I'm sure I could tighten things down with the screws on the front and I'll have to look into that but essentially the camera screws on to cut on the first bounce I'm planning on using the Z WOA si 533 with this system for better for worse I don't know if it's a great fit or not but it should look a little something like this here we go so this is going to be what the camera looks like at the front there this is the hyper star system in action on the Edge HD 11 and so this is as I said shooting at F 1.9 about 500 millimeter with this system I'll try it in this configuration I'll try it in the traditional camera at the back configuration which involves it threading on the back here the rear cell for the galaxy type photography but I just wanted you to see what it looks like in the hyper star configuration I'm so excited to explore this new territory of Astro photography I felt that it was important to bring you guys along for this ride this is going to be used for a Galaxy season so probably won't be busting this out till I gets a little bit warmer maybe in the end of February March then you'll see this in action but I wanted you to see this system as it is right now [Music]

Channel: AstroBackyard

Views: 225,878

Keywords: telescope, astrophotography, Celestron EdgeHD 11, Celestron, SCT, Edge, HD, galaxy telescope, astrobackyard

Id: PUOW3cusrK0

Length: 13min 13sec (793 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 14 2020