[Buldric]

Originally Posted by Stevemg13

Hi there, I'm a new member to this site. I found you guys on the net when I was researching my new hobbie. Here is my story: My wife and I are looking into buying a new camera, one we both can share. She loves to scrape book and I like to stargaze. We asked around and decided to go with the Canon Rebal Xti. Good price range and (as I'm told) good for astrophoto. I currently use a Celestron NS SE 8" scope for observing. (SCT)
I've been digging around the web the past few days and here is a list of other items I came across needed for prime focusing astrophoto w/ this type of scope.

Glad to hear it. The more of us out there, the more of us that can compete creating better and better images. However, dont expect to be a main competitor on the first night out. It isnt as easy as you may think, even if you think its hard, its probably even harder than that.

1 Feild Flattener

All focal reducers for SCT's (as far as I am aware) Already do this. No need to but a seperate field flatening filter.

2 focal reducer (2 types 6.3/3.3)

Use 6.3 (Use a 6.3 Full Aperture Focal Reducer. about $155, not "neccissary" for many objects, but good in the long run. IS neccissary for a few things. It will decrease your magnification, give a wider FoV, and decrease your exposure time by a factor of 3)

3 (2" female adapter slide to SCT

Do you mean a 2" Visual back? I couldnt find if this scope can do 2". I could only find that it came with 1.25". Make sure you can even upgrade to a 2" Visual back first)

4 Male SCT to 2"; slide adapter

Im not sure what your doing here... I would use a 2" direct adapter to go from the Visual back/diagonal to the T-Ring. See http://www.meridiantelescopes.com/im...nical/dp2b.htm

5 XTi adapter to 2" slide

Rebel Xti T-Ring?

6 Hartman mask

See my own gallery for one design. Look at A.S.I.G.N observatories site for another design. Both use the same face design. In fact I modeled my "face" after his =p My mask goes over the entire end of the telescope, where as his slides in against the corrector plate lip. Though it doesnt touch the correcter plate, it gets too close for my comfort, so thats why i designed mine the way it is.

7 Flipe switch w/ some mm eyepiece for focusing

Now you lost me. Don't know what you mean by "Flip Switch" and eyepiece for focusing. 1.) You focus with the heartman's mask, 2.) You dont use eyepieces for "most" astrophotography, as it reduces contrast, and brightness.

8 processing software of some kind

I reccomend Adobe Photoshop CS 3 if you can, or the smaller Photoshop if not. For stacking I use Deep Sky Stacker.

That is it so far, please help to fill in the list as needed. I'm new and in need of the pros. on the rest. thank you.

Some other things you will need is if you'll notice, you have the same camera as me for astrophotography =) and you will need to order the remote for it. As you have to use the "bulb" setting to do the long exposure, which without the remote requires you to hold down the shutter button for the entire exposure, which, as you can imagine...hehehe. Press the remote button once to open the shutter, and again when your ready to close the shutter. This is NOT optional.

You will also need some way to guide the scope. Computerized guiding is only so good. Any real drift is bad for a picture, so it requires you to be at the helm. There are two main ways to do this. One is called an "Off-Axis Guider" Which sticks a little T-Bar into your assembly to steal off some light, so you can watch what your taking a picture of as its taking the picture. You need an "Illuminated reticle eyepiece" to do this, so you can keep adjusting your scope to keep the illuminated crosshairs over your designated "guide star".
The second way is to buy a high power "guide scope" This scope installs in place of your old guide scope, and you can either use the "illuminated reticle" method to manually track your object, or you can but another type of DSI camera which is called an "Auto-Guider" which takes pictures of the stars through the guide scope, and sends signals to the scope to change position to compensate for any change.

Another thing is that you will need a Wedge. If you don't have a wedge the stars in your F.O.V. will spin in the picture over time, even if its keeping track perfectly. I'm not going to explain this in this post, but its what happens=p Because of this effect, if you don't have a wedge, your exposures tend to be maxed out at around 3-6 min, depending on proximity to polaris. Clear Skies, and Good luck on your Astro-Photography mission!