I have been surrounded by quite a few interesting things over the last few months. Here is what I have been doing..."Researching" ... Researching on Astrophotography!
Fact: It is not possible to take GREAT pictures with a Dobsonian... Agreed!
Truth: It is possible to take reasonably good pictures with a Dobsonian.
Let me explain...
Astro enthusiasts know this already, that celestial objects are not stationary in the sky... they keep moving... well, not exactly... Earth spins and so it appears as if the celestial objects are moving. In any case it appears as if they are moving. Now, with a dobsonian, one will have to manually adjust and align the object under observation repeatedly... which could be quiet some pain(especially at 300 and above magnifications the objects under observation travel pretty fast).
Concept for equitorial mount: In order to have the object under observation at the center of the viewer... we will have to compensate for the motion of the Earth (Earth rotates from west to east... hence all objects appear to rise from the east and set in the west). Compensation would mean... if we place our telescope on a devise that rotates it in the opposite direction to that of the earth... the earths motion and the telescopes motion will cancel each other and the object of observation will remain "still" at the center of the viewer.
Method: After a lot of research, I found that the equitorial mount will be the best solution. Building this would take a little bit of engineering drawing, little electronics and carpentary. If it sounds hard... well... it is!
By the way... you must be thinking what has Astrophotography got to do with all of this.
Concept for Astrophotography: Taking pictures during night(or on low light) is tough. as the exposure that the camera gets to the light is very less. Low light photography is done using long exposure. There are ways to do this using a ccd webcam(in my case a Logitech QuickcamPro 3000... these CCD webcams are not in production anymore so I bought one on Ebay for $45). You will need to do some modification to the circuit and a little soldering to the webcam circuit board. For a long exposure shot.. the object under observation needs to be focused at the center of the viewer for a long time( 5 sec, 10 sec, 1 min... etc depending on the object). Hence the Equitorial Mount, as it will not be humanly possible to keep the object at the center of the eyepeace manually.
Now-a-days I am trying to build this total setup from various sources available on the internet. It will at-least take me a month or so to complete this whole thing. I plan to do a tutotial with pictures, for those of you who might be interested. Will update my progress on regular basis. Stay tuned and feel free to leave comments.
Clear skies!
