Using a REFLECTOR TELESCOPE for Galaxy Photography!

[Music] we are going to the storage unit to pick up the Quattro 300p I think it's the 300p right it's the 12in 12in monster is in one of these storage lockers so we've had this storage locker for like what over a year right two years almost two years two years and the observatory is in here the sky shed pot is in here and a couple of Scopes one of them being just a big reflector that has never come out yet ref two reflectors I think the 8 in and the 12 in are in our good old storage locker here is a bit Rusty all right hey that's where her basketball is oh she's flat okay is that going to fit in my car oh she'll fit team left lefts don't take that on your own no I got it it's fine it's good I'm good we're good A little Dusty oh boy you're not supposed to lift that by yourself it's light so I open the box this thing is huge and I realized there's no mirror in here it's just the tube so we need to go back to the storage unit and get the mirror and install it we haven't been here in a year all of a sudden we're here twice in the same let's find this thing I think that's it that's definitely it nothing else that's it are you sure hey that's a mirror right there counter is nuts so I finally got this big monster mounted to the eq8 when we picked up the scope I didn't realize that we forgot the mirror inside I just picked up the tube itself so I had to install the 12in mirror at the back of the Quattro 300p getting it mounted on the eq8 was a bit scary it's it's a very heavy telescope it's the heaviest telescope I've ever mounted on a telescope Mount before three counterweights a new record so I think the size of it the overall size and mass 60 lbs of this telescope not only limits the you know number of people that have telescope mounts robust enough to take on a scope like this but it's I mean it's a lot of work to get that out here it's basically a TW man job so I'm hoping that my 365 cover can go on top of this thing and I can actually leave it out here for for a few nights because I wouldn't want to be pulling this thing in and out it just wouldn't make any sense so the telescope itself is 12200 mm focal length at F4 so great for Galaxies the thing is I'm using a coma corrector it's a coma corrector reducer from starizona called the Nexus coma corrector so it's a 75 times reducer on top of being a corrector so that now brings me to 900 mm focal length at F3 which is just mindblowing to me so I'm just deciding on which Target to shoot and before I do that I wanted to look at my image scale so I have my handy spreadsheet here and it looks like with the Quattro 300p at 1200 mm and using the ASI 294 MC Pro I'll be at an image scale of 79 which should be you know a little on the soft side but I'm willing to deal with that as a reminder to get your image scale all you need to do is divide the pixel size of your camera in my case 4.63 divided by the focal length of your telescope time 206 the ideal range is between 1.0 and 2.0 under 1.0 could be a little soft oversampled and over 2.0 might be a little crunchy under sampled so then looking in stellarium here I still have the the backdrop for my old backyard in here I'm trying to decide on the appropriate Target I know I want to shoot a Galaxy in Broad B it's a nice moonless night and I HED and hot about different targets but I think I'm going to go for the whirlpool Galaxy that's a nice test of you know 12200 mm this image scale this sensor size and a nice bright awesome Galaxy to really show the difference that all this extra aperture makes with this huge Newtonian so I think this should be a good Target for my setup tonight another thing you may have noticed on here is my little guide scope the Evo guide 50 a little 250 mm focal length guide scope which I actually think is going to be enough to guide this 900 mm focal length scope it's convenient though because I was able to use the finder scope bracket didn't have to put any other attachments on here so it messed with the balance a little bit but having the camera at the bottom I've seen in pictures of other people using Scopes like this seems to be the best I don't think we'll have any trouble in terms of clearance and then the weight is at least centered I guess I could spin it a little bit to get this as the center point to be even better balanc in the declination I just realized I don't know where I'm going to put the ASI a so you need 55 mm of back spacing between the coma corrector so I have the adapters on the ASI 294 MC Pro and then a filter drawer here which is really nice and I'll be using a light pollution filter in there I've mounted the ASI a over here here so I think that's going to help with the overall balance and then I can run the cords nicely to my devices that's the plan anyway there's a gral nest in the Cedar right here so if you hear the babies crying and the mother flying back and forth hopefully I'm not uh disturbing her too much I just heard a red belly woodpecker as well so the reason I'm using the ASI 294 MC Pro in place of say a fullframe camera is for two reasons one this scope at F4 is really unforgiving and even with that coma corrector in place I think with a full-frame sensor it's not going to look good around the edges so I'm using a smaller sensor the 294 and then the other reason is that I get a better pixel scale or image scale with this one with the reducer on the corrector this focal length this camera sensor 4.63 microns pixel size I'm going to get an image scale of right about 1.0 which is great so it's a great camera choice for this telescope system so everything's connected up nicely I think it should work out okay we'll find out once it starts moving around the last step I need to take is to colate this thing so I'll be using a laser cator I'll use the same one that I used for my dobsonians which is really easy to use so I should have no issues there just some tweaking to get that perfect and then finding focus and seeing if if that coma is bad and kind of seeing what this sensor looks like through this scope I almost forgot the filter I'm going to use the new optal along L quad enhance for the first time which is basically the new opal along L Pro so hopefully that does a good job on a Broadband Target like the whirpool Galaxy we have a moonless night tonight that is great so we're just going to shoot through those bortle six Skies it's supposed to be clear it is not clear yet but we still have time so I'll use this filter in the filter drawer in front of that ASI 294 and hopefully it works out well with this system oh wow holy crap it's really close right out of the gate regular colation is essential for your reflector telescope to perform at its best while this is one of the reasons I've avoided using newtonians for a long time it's actually really easy to do once you get used to it I just used a cheap laser coletor I bought on Amazon to get the job done so it's all balanced and everything's connected I've got the scope in colation now so it's all ready to go just waiting for it to get dark dark out the one thing I'm curious to see is that with this scope shooting at F3 how short my exposures are going to be I have a feeling that in one shot color it's going to be 120 seconds will be the sweet spot but maybe even 60 seconds that's a lot of apperture 12in mirror doing astrophotography so I'm pretty excited to see what that first sub exposure looks like on the whirlpool [Music] okay my first my first 92 sub is about to come through here we go Whirlpool Galaxy coming up oh 120 seconds I did here we go first sub exposure 120 seconds oh my God look at that that's a single exposure only two minutes oh my God [Music] [Music] all oh [Music]

Channel: AstroBackyard

Views: 152,681

Keywords: reflector telescope, newtonian reflector telescope, galaxy photography, telescope, galaxy, astrobackyard

Id: z6XXSFR2GfM

Length: 11min 31sec (691 seconds)

Published: Fri May 10 2024