To scope or not to scope
by:
Simon Tang
Have you ever looked up and wondered what is up there? Maybe take a picture or two.
Astronomy doesn't always have to be about owning a telescope. You can still do a lot with just a pair of binoculars. Even better than that is if you have a camera, you can take some great images of all the different objects in the sky.
I find myself using regular camera lens over a telescope still as I have discovered some of the objects in the sky like the North America Nebula is so big, that using a telescope only results in frustration. Using a "GoTo" system, you slew your telescope round to see nothing but black empty space and maybe a slight whisp of a nebula.
After several attempts I gave up on the idea of doing a mosaic image and decided to just go back to the way I did it before I owned a telescope. Only this time round, I have an Equatorial Mount.
Okay so im cheating a little and not everyone has one of these things. I have proved in the past you can still do things without an EQ mount (it's the short term us Astro Nerds use) as ive imaged the Andromeda Galaxy before without one.
So the question is, what kind of camera am I using? Strangely enough I always tell people to use or buy what they can afford and not look at my setup as the benchmark. If i did that, i'd be purchasing $10,000s worth of equipment and probably get the exact same result without knowing what im getting into.
Here at LGSCV, we've complied a small guide to help everyone on their way to choosing the right camera.
