Astrophotography Pt. 1 – Equipment

Equipment choices and Image Size

During the August meeting, Tom Heisey gave a presentation on equipment choices for astrophotography. This was a basic discussion of how equipment choices affect the amount of sky you see and the targets you’ll shoot, not a discussion of the available equipment. You can download the PDF of the presentation, with notes here:

Areas discussed:

• Telescope types, with general pros and cons
• Telescope mount types and uses in imaging
• Camera sensor basics
• Camera types for astrophotography
• Image Scale – this is often confusing for beginners or even experienced astrophotographers, so this was the meat of the presentation, including several charts showing different ways that image scale impacts camera and telescope choice.
• Links and Sources
• Next month, we’ll discuss generalities of equipment setup, problem solving, and more.

The spreadsheet (Microsoft format) that was the source of the charts in the presentation are available for download here:

You can also do these calculations at web sites like Astronomy Tools or AstroPix. Many astrophotography programs also have image scale and camera field of view calculators build into the program.