This is the equipment Kent and I used for the first few years of stargazing. Due to our latitude and the lack of advanced abilities of our mount, we were unable to get many exposures beyond 30 seconds. Here’s what we used:
- Telescope: Kent’s Celestron Nexstar 8SE (SCT)
- Mount: The Alt-Azimuth mount that came with Kent’s scope
- Camera: Either my Sony A7SII or Kent’s Nikon D3300
- Power: Kent’s Celestron PowerTank
- Either the 1.25″ Star Diagonal that came with Kent’s scope or my 2″ Diagonal from Celestron
The A7SII is a Full Frame camera, which means that it’s image sensor is larger than 1.25″ across. This makes a nice round shadow at the edges of our images unless I use my 2″ Diagonal. Kent’s D3300 uses an APS-C size sensor, which has no such vignette effect on his Diagonal.
Argo Navis
Amateur Astronomers never stop upgrading their rigs, and Kent and I are no different. We just aren’t made of money like seemingly everyone else in this hobby. In 2019, we began purchasing equipment to upgrade the capabilities of our rig. We decided to name the project Argo Navis, after an old, no longer used constellation that has since been split into 3 other constellations. The first step was to take the telescope that came with Kent’s NexStar 8SE combo and put it on a better mount. We went with the Atlas EQ-G.
- Telescope: Kent’s Celestron 8″ SCT
- Mount: Kent’s Orion Atlas EQ-G
- Camera: Kent’s Nikon D3300 or My Sony A7SII
- Power: A shop battery of some sort, generally used for starting cars, but with a much higher capacity than the PowerTank and much more rugged
- Either Kent’s 1.25″ Star Diagonal (when using his camera) or my Celestron 2″ Diagonal (when using mine)
In the future, we are planning on using a dedicated astrophotography CCD, a star tracker, and a laptop.
Check out our progress capturing the entire Messier catalog, or check out the equipment we use to do it.