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Entry-Level Astronomy?
brobak writes "I'm getting ready to move into a new home on a couple of acres of rural property a significant distance from any large source of light pollution. I've always been interested in astronomy in general, and I would like to put my dark skies to use by picking up decent telescope and learning a bit about the skies over my head. The overall budget for this project is going to be around $1,000. I am particularly interested in astrophotography, but I understand that that may carry me outside the scope of the initial budget. I've already signed up for my local astronomy club's next monthly meeting. I have been doing Web research, but I thought that the Slashdot community would be the perfect place to get opinions on entry-level equipment, websites, and books."
The first thing I'd do would be to install Stellarium. That'd enable you to "tune in" on stars, even in cloudy weather.
Have a look at http://iceinspace.com.au/ while it's run out of Australia, there are members worldwide.
'Where to start' is a common question there.
... Google Sky.
Militant Agnostic: "I don't know, and damn it, neither do you!"
Now, I know that this probably won't be the kind of answer you're looking for, but here I go anyway...
Personally, if I had the kind of space you had, with no light pollution, and if I had the budget you mentioned: I would buy a high quality digital SLR camera. Obviously, if you're looking to photograph things that you need a telescope to see, this wouldn't be a good use of money for you. But, if you're looking to take shots of constellations and the moon and such, then a high-quality digital SLR with a tripod will work beautifully.
Plus, such a setup would allow you to take great photos of various weather phenomenon (e.g., thunderstorms). While it may not be the case for you, most of the people that I know that enjoy photographing the moon and the night sky also love photographing weather as well.
And, obviously, you'd then have a great camera for travelling and such.
Hang out at astronomy clubs and go to their camp-outs and slowly glean more info before blowing a wad of cash. Maybe subscribe to Astronomy Magazine. However, don't be tempted by the ads to buy the Ultra-Mega-Scope. Work your way up slowly. And, purchase a good star map with all the common nebula's and galaxies marked. Also note that the best viewing targets tend to come out in the winter, so prepare yourself for cold weather.
Table-ized A.I.
Yes, $1000 is a rather small budget where astrophotography is concerned. A good mount alone can cost many times that amount. Please don't skimp on the mount. I assure you, few things in life are more frustrating and miserable than attempting quality astrophotography on a cheap, inadequate mount.
You can get a quality telescope for $1000, especially if you build your own. I grind my own mirrors because the mirror I make myself is quite a bit better than all but a very few of the ones commercially available. It's quite a bit of fun too.
Your best course of action would be to hold off on getting a telescope for now. Get good astronomical binoculars ($200 - $400) and learn the sky. Once you've done that, you'll have a much better idea of exactly the aspects of astronomy that interest you and you'll have some additional time to decide upon the right equipment. You'll also have more time to save some additional money for qualityequipment.
When you go to your astronomy club's meeting, see if they have a group that builds telescopes. Building your own telescope is a great way to save a lot of money, plus you'll learn a lot in the process.
If you're lucky enough to be in the SF bay area, the Chabot Observatory Telescope Maker's Workshop is a great place to learn about telescopes, and also how to build them. They can guide you through the process, and its really not as hard as you might think. http://chabotspace.org/vsc/observatory/telescopemakers/
If you want to hold of on astrophotograpy for a while, I recommend picking up a Dobsonian mount telescope. They're a low cost design, and you can find 10 and 12 inch reflectors for $800. Also, they're easy to build, which goes back to the building your own comment earlier.
Dobsonians are not suitable for photography though. But, they are a cheap way to break into backyard astronomy.
The best advice I got (now in retrospective) when starting out was to buy an telescope that was easy to take out and setup, the best scope is the scope you use often.
http://www.intellipool.se/ - Intellipool Network Monitor
$1000 is not much. I've been doing research quite a long time on what should I buy, to get the best possible view both for planets and deep-sky. You know - usually for deeps skies a newton with huge mirrors is good, while they are not applicable for planets, because newtons cannot produce big magnification with enough detail. While for planet viewing the refractors are the best, because they can produce big magnifications without the distortions of newtonians. But refractors have too small aperture to collect enough light for comfortable deep-sky viewing.
The best balance in this big_mirror/refractor conflict is an apochromatic refractor. Because - apochromatic means that the lens are covered with special layers that give about 96+% of light transmission (so it's better than non-apochromatic refractor, where some light is wasted on the lens and you don't see deep-sky objects clearly), and special layer eliminates light dispersion like in an optical prism (otherwise each color would go on a different path and the resulting picture of something looked more like a rainbow instead of beight sharp). And also as a refractor it's good for planets. But... this APO refractor has to have big aperture, or it won't work for deep-sky anyway.
Refractors have some other advantages - for instance you don't have unnecessary air flow between the lens because they are inside a tube. Newtons are much brighter (good for deep-sky) but air turbulence blurries the view on planets.
Oh, and forget about cassegrains, they are compact, that's true (the only advantage). But the view is terrible.
Well if you have just $1000 you gotta decide: (1) want to see distant galaxies (newton), or (2) view to see planets (refractor). But I suggest to spend a bit more cash and get APO refractor. Should be good for both.
You can look at those reviews I had bookmarked long time ago: http://www.cloudynights.com/item.php?item_id=1260 and http://www.cloudynights.com/item.php?item_id=32&pr=2x6x17
You can consider Takahashi also, althought from my research it looks like TMB make better equipment, but you never know that for sure: http://www.tmboptical.com/itemsGrid.asp?cat_id=4 .
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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You're not going to have enough budget to pull off any sort of astrophotography that will satisfy you, so I would recommend you start saving up.
:)
For astrophotography you absolutely *must* have an equatorial mount, it is simply impossible to do astrophotography with a stock altitude-azimuth mount, because while it can still track the sky as it moves, the view will rotate as it does so. With an equatorial mount, the view stays properly aligned even while it tracks the sky. German equatorial mount is the preferred mount for astrophotography. Even looking at just the mount you've pretty much blown your budget right there.
Secondly, you're going to want a high quality right-ascension drive motor. It's possible to get by without one, though tedious and limiting, but don't bother with a cheap one. The gearing is insufficient for astrophotography and will cause jerking and backlash resulting in awful pictures.
You'll also need to get a heavy duty mount and tripod, because a normal tripod is only designed for the weight of a telescope, not a telescope with a camera hanging off the end. You also need to make sure you've got a very sturdy, firm mount, because any vibration at all will ruin your pictures. Remember we're talking about huge magnifications and long exposures here, it's extremely easy to blur the pictures. Astrophotography is a challenging enough hobby to begin with. Inferior equipment can make it damn near impossible.
You'll notice I haven't even talked about the actual telescope yet. That's how important the mount and tripod is to astrophotography. So now that I've completely blown your budget, I'll try and be a bit more gentle on the telescope side of things. Probably the most bang for your buck in this case will be a newtonian reflector telescope. They're by far the cheapest type of scope per inch of aperture. Sort of big and unwieldy, and they require very precise and regular maintenance (called collimation). I'd recommend a bare minimum of 5" aperture, but as high as 8" if you can manage it.
Then you have to figure out how to mount your camera to the telescope, which is a black art in and of itself. Duct tape is not recommended. For most SLRs and telescope brands you can find a suitable T-mount adaptor which will allow you to attach your camera in place of the telescope's eyepiece. For non-SLRs, I'm not sure. If you were thinking of getting an actual astronomy CCD camera (such as the popular SBIG brand) well that alone will blow your budget and then a whole lot more. Then you'll want a second one to use it as an autoguider.
Astronomy isn't cheap, but it is rewarding. Good luck and clear skies.
Random and weird software I've written.
I went through the same thing. I was fresh to amateur astronomy and didn't know what to do. My first warning: Don't spend to little on a telescope. $180 for a StarBlast is the lowest I'd pay for anything decent (and it is, I drool over it as a quick 'plop down and observe' scope from time to time). Second Warning: Astrophotography is insanely expensive. As in 10+ times your budget. Don't do it. If you really want to do astrophotography take a camera, put it on a tripod, point at the sky, set it as wide as you can and expose for 15 seconds for digital, a few hours for film. The results are quite nice.
Here's what my own experiences have taught me: Get a Dobsonian. With $1000 you can get a 10"-12" Dobsonian and still have tons of room for accessories. A dobsonian is very portable compared to a refractor and with near zero setup and takedown using it is much easier than a refractor too. 10" is a lot of aperture and you won't catch the "aperture fever" for something bigger for a while. The scope I eventually got is an Orion XT10 Intelliscope, but you may not want the computerization with your budget.
I found the people at Cloudy Nights very, very helpful. They have reviews of lots of products as well as their forums and they tend to specialize in getting the most out of your money.
As far as books go, I use Nightwatch by Terence Dickinson every night I observe just for the charts. Star Watch by Philip Harrington goes well with Nightwatch as good place to find new objects for the beginner. A lot of people suggest Turn Left at Orion, but I fount it to be a bit slow and the charts lacking in lower magnitude stars for their size.
A decent pair of wide field binoculars and a good sturdy tripod (20x60's weigh like 6 pounds so a tripod is a must). I recently picked up a pair of 20x75 Russian bins for less than £200 (US$400) and a surveyor's tripod for £30 (US$60). If you have an SLR camera with an M42 mount it wouldn't be a stretch to build a ring adapter for one side of the binocular and spot with the other side, you can get some good closeups of the moon and some of the brighter deepsky objects (LMC/SMC/M33/M42, etc.). Being in the middle of a city I found that film was getting a bit expensive particularly with a lot of shots being spoilt by streetlighting bloom, so I started to experiment with CMOS and CCD. I quickly came to the realisation that a supercooled CCD was far more sensitive than any film, and so went for broke and bought a cheap secondhand palmcorder. A freon cooling system later and I'm taking shots of the Pleiades cluster in the middle of a major metropolis!
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
I read in an astronomy magazine that a budding astronomer should first buy a high powered pair of binoculars (10mm x 50mm) and star charts, plus a red LED flashlight.
That way, you get used to pointing out where things are in constellations. You also find out if you can handle the long nights, getting your eyes used to darkness and waiting, waiting, waiting.
It takes about an hour to get used to the darkness. Red LED flashlights also keep your eyes dilated, having little effect on night vision.
If you get good at doing things the "old-fashioned way", then buy from somebody on EBay, who spent the big bucks and found out they weren't as interested as they originally thought.
Worst case, you got a good pair of binoculars and saved about a grand.
Best case, you learned a lot more about astronomy and will be able to find anything by constellation.
Of course, download and use Stellarium. They have a red night vision mode you can take with you on a laptop. (I'd still recommend dimming the display as much as possible and enabling a 1 minute monitor shutdown, to keep your eyes).
Also, go to http://heavens-above.com/ for more information about tracking objects in the sky. (Be sure to synchronize your clock to the atomic clock, since satellites and other objects wait for nobody). Watching satellites pass is a good way to keep yourself interested in astronomy, while you wait, wait, wait.
Heavens-above.com and Stellarium are excellent planning tools, as are your handy star charts.
I'm an amateur astronomer myself and Mike's advice is perfect. Astrophotography is addicitive, but needs planning and patience. As I assume you don't own an telescope yet, my advice is to buy a good binocular. If you still want to buy an telescope, buy a cheap ( not cheapo ) one, around US$ 250, with EQUATORIAL mount, that's VERY important. Get used to it, learn what you like the most to observe ( deep-sky objects, planets, moon, variable stars, nebula ), learn how to align your telescope so it can track the sky movement's. Then borrow from someone an old SLR camera, with film. Yes, that's right, not a digital one. Couple in your telescope ( you'll need an adapter ) and read some FAQs, ask help from your astronomy club and play with the settings, see how they change the result. You can use a webcam for that too, and some software like Registrax to stack the pictures, the result is amazing! After you get to know the dirty details, you'll know what's the best equipment to buy, the best DSLR camera. One tip: it's not about the camera or the telescope. I've seen AMAZING pictures taken with an old SLR with a home-made refractor telescope, mounted on a US$ 500 mount. It's about the MOUNT, spare no expense here. Spend 1000 on a mount and 200 on a telescope, you'll get GREAT pictures. Dark skies for you!
One of my earliest astronomical memories (aside from the shows at the local planetarium) was standing on a friend's driveway just after dusk. He says to me, pointing at a bright point of light against the rapidly darkening sky, "hey, I bet that's Saturn". He ducks into the garage, and drags out a 8-ish inch reflector telescope his dad had made. He lines it up, adjusts the focus, looks, and then invites me to have a look. Boom, there it is. Just like in all the picture books, only live, in front of my eyes.
So look at the planets through your scope. It should be bright enough to resolve any of the naked-eye visible planets as discs. You should be able to see the phases of Venus.
On my desk I have a picture of Comet Hale-Bopp. I took it with a 35mm film camera, with a 100-200 mm zoom lens set all the way out. Tripod, Kodacolor Gold color film (although there isn't any color in the print.) I thought I would want to take more astro-photographs, but haven't gotten around to it yet.