dyximan

I have a number of questions concerning astrophotography lenses equipment etc. I presently have a D500 and will eventually go to a full frame, but for now my question are in regards to my D500 and equipment to buy for astrophotography. I have a Tamron 150-600 G2 5-6.3 a Nikon 18-300 3.5-6.3 and a Nikon 16-80 2.8-4. My questions are as follows.
Should I buy a faster lens 1.8/1.4/1.2 prime
20MM or larger
35MM
50MM or other
Or would it be better or just as good to get, And excuse me but not sure what it is called the mechanisims used to rotate with the earth/stars.
and or any and other considerations I am may be missing.

Europa Loc: West Hills, CA

My vote, is get a SkyGuider Pro. The lenses you are currently have would be plenty to get you far into AP. It’s basically the same concept as taking the leap into a telescope and mount...put your money into the mount.

This tracker is good enough to get you going on learning to track the sky, learning to calibrate and stack images, dither, etc. it is something that you will always have a use for, I have several telescopes and mounts, and recently upgraded my skytracker to a SkyGuider Pro, so i’m. Or just giving out advice.

The problem with these “sky trackers” is that they are not GoTo systems, meaning that you need to find the object in the sky. This is much more difficult that it appears, but you will learn. I recommend getting a hotshot adaptor to install a laser on your DSLR. It’ll help to get you close. Don’t cheap out on the laser pen, these cheaper versions will not work in the cold, and I don’t mean freezing, I mean ~60 degrees.

SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

I'm on the "Tails" side of Brian's coin toss.
I say if you want to get into Astrophotography, get a Go-To mount right off the bat.
That's a mount you could use now, and as you progress with telescopes.
(Because you will sink into the black hole, once you start... )

Eventually, you will want to get away from DSLR's and into real astro cameras.

dyximan

I read about this new Canon astro camera what is it they have that DSL r's don't

dyximan

I looked the 2 tracking systems up online and I think for an extra 150 bucks or so I would go with the newer version. I see where it was also mentioned that eventually I should get away from the DSLRI read something about a cannon astrophotography camera what's the difference?

Europa Loc: West Hills, CA

Post a link to the canon. I’m not familiar. A dedicated CCD/CMOS camera has cooling. This helps to keep the noise down. I was assuming you were going into this on a budget. If you decide to go with traditional cool Astro camera, then you will need to look at going with a OSC, or Mono w/ filters.

This is the beginning of the black hole Sonny mentions.

dyximan

I wasn't able to upload the link but it's called EOS ra mirrorless by cannon its 2500 bucks plus or minus

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

There are different aspects of astrophotography that interest different individuals. Some like the wide angle views of the Milky Way with interesting foreground objects. Some like to shoot the moon and planets. And some like nebula. And some like galaxies. What you use for each of these is different. Need to judge where you fit in.

stepping beyond Loc: usa eastcoast

I'm jumping in dyximan , I've got handicaps and thought the AP was just a pipe dream . Let me tell ya , my buddy Rob in Wy taught me the way from 3,000 + miles away. It's not just a journey , it's an awesome ride . I started with a webcam , then wanted to go farther than my 80mm refractor would take me and now use a cooled Cmos astronomy camera , 8 " Astrograph/newtonian and a old used Meade lxd55 goto mount that they don't even produce anymore . Research , research and ask plenty of ? before you commit to falling in the money pit.

SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

OK, you give me an inch, I'll take you a mile....

EOS ra Mirrorless.

Or for Jim in Albaturkey the full monte: https://www.google.com/search?q=EOS+ra+mirrorless+by+cannon&rlz=1C1CHBH_enUS779US779&oq=EOS+ra+mirrorless+by+cannon&aqs=chrome..69i57.2462j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
(Jim opened a hidden link of mine and it was something that shocked him. So I offer him the Full Monty links. LOL! )

Makes me think of that camera some of the guys here were using. Sorry, senior moment, it ended with an A A Sony?
But essentially, a mirrorless camera can be a good choice. DSLR's have things moving inside of them, The mirror flipping about induces vibrations. Those in turn cause your resulting image to become blurred or fuzzy.
A mirrorless camera uses an electronic shutter, much like dedicated Astro cameras do. (To the best of my knowledge)
And yet, the mirrorless camera could probably still use your existing Cannon lenses. Although, I think being ra, it might only work best at night.

I tend to break things down into the simplest of terms, so I can fully understand them.
To Astrophotography, a telescope is the lens. The camera is the imaging device (of course), and the mount is what aims the whole works and guides them steadily so imaging can be done.

Telescopes of different types are good at different things. The big Newtonian types tend to work best for the Planets and Moon, or Solar System type objects. Maybe even asteroids.
And there are specialized telescopes, like Brian's RASA telescopes, specialized for Astrophotography.
Then there is me. I wanted to image various Nebulae. The more I looked into how, the smaller and more refined the lenses became. So I jumped in at an ED80T CF for me. A Refractor type telescope. Just the specialized triplet lens up front, and the Carbon Fiber tube for it's temperature stability over other types of telescope tubes.
Besides looking sexy, the CF tube actually holds focus best because it doesn't change as much as other frames of a telescope. Metal being one of the ones that can shrink a lot during a night of hooting with the owls, and that affects the focus. Stability leads to sharper images. (Even though I am hard pressed at times to get focused)

Cameras are called on to take longer exposures (to gather more light (photons)), so that is another reason DSLR's are a bit stressed to meet the demands of collecting longer exposures. And why many/most Astro Camera's include some form of cooling for the matrix. Electronic, or passive, it helps take away the heat from hot pixels at the source. Most (or me at least) find ways to filter or change those hot pixels in post processing. But I prefer to avoid them if possible in the imaging, and not doctor my picturds any more than absolutely necessary.
When taking 120s images, the sensors pixels can heat up dramatically. Hot Pixels show up as tiny dots of RGB in your image. I'll attach two images, one raw, one filtered, so you can see.

The mount. The all important mount is what very slowly guides your telescope and camera assembly during the time you are collecting images to build into a finished picture.
Many things can affect your results. I found by placing my mount in a dedicated spot, I could better retain my polar alignment. And that helps me keep things simpler. I find accuracy is much more beneficial to doing the nightly alignment to begin my adventures.
Short of a Pier Mount, it works best for me. I use to bring in my mount each night, then go through a lengthy attempt at polar alignment. And often it was more miss than hit. So leaving my mount set up, with my waterproof canvas bag, and my 32 gallon plastic dome (a trash can), keeps it polar aligned. Or more closely anyway.
My mount is a bottom of the barrel Celestron AVX. But was as much as I wanted to invest in a mount at the time. I now wish I could do better, but I get by. I consider it a challenge to try and perfect so many variables affecting my imaging outcome.
In my career, I was often used on Special Projects because of my tenacity to try and make something work.
So, the best mount one can manage is the foundation to your ultimate successes.

Something else I don't think was mentioned here is EAA. Electronically Assisted Astronomy.
Much of this revolves around a computer connected to all the equipment to monitor and control the various programs making it all work. Many use a Laptop, or a Tablet, to run things like PHD2 for guiding, which uses my Orion guide scope and camera to guide my mount on an object. (Yeah, it's a separate entity that is an eye for the mount)
Or in my case Nexremote by Celestron for mount control.
Then I use Stellarium as my targeting and acquisition program which controls my mount through the Nexremote program (or app).
These are basics I use to control my mount, and are simple enough for me to understand well and use.
Then there are the camera programs for the camera in use, focuser program for my electronic focuser, and finally, a program called Tight Vnc that allows me to operate my entire equipment remotely from my indoor computer connected to my 2-in-one Tablet/Laptop (Or simply, my mount computer) via WiFi.
All of my little triumphs I owe to my Friends here who helped me learn and figure this out.
As you may have gathered, each is working on this goal from different aspects and different capabilities.

So... do you have a particular direction in mind?
Solar System/Planetary? Or further out like Jim123 mentions? Or Deep Space and Nebula like I like to dabble in?
Deciding can help to figure out what to suggest to you. Then you can fine tune things to your liking.

You are looking into a black hole as far as costs go. What I did was to spend about a Month deciding IF I wanted to, and WHAT I wanted to.
Then about 3 months creating and grooming several wish lists toward the end. I started around December, and pulled the trigger in April. Then spent years figuring things out.
But I'm real happy at it. And now that I'm back into full retirement, I have time to play again. Just waiting on the weather. I pick my nights to play.

These picturds are from a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. But demonstrate hot pixels graphically.

Example of hot pixels. 1200s YCbCr HA7nm

(Download)

Same retouched. Noise filter turns the hot pixels into star looking dots.