Which eyepiece camera?

[Peter B]

I'm coming back to astronomy after a 50 year absence and it was nice to get a warm welcome in the 'Introduce Yourself' forum.

 

I've bought back into the hobby with a Sky Watcher 130p and the AZ GTi Wi Fi mount.  But so much has changed in astrophotograhy since I was last here that researching the right kit to buy is like navigating a minefield!

 

I have researched that I can attach my DSLR camera to the Sky Watcher with eyepiece projection and I can operate the shutter from the SynScan app via a remote cable from the mount's SNAP port.   I've got a remote shutter cable with the camera but it's a bit short, see picture, and I might have to source a longer one to accommodate the eyepiece projector .  I've tried this setup and it works fine so I'll definitely be using it when I've bought the eyepiece projection kit to achieve focus.  I've also been looking at eyepiece cameras and discovered that that's another minefield!

 

So two questions if I may:

 

As a novice, would you advise something like a simple 2x Barlow lens for eyepiece projection for my DSLR or an eyepiece projector which accepts an eyepiece?

 

As for eyepiece cameras, the most popular and widely advertised seems to be the Bresser Mirokular Full HD for around £60.  Would this be a sensible buy, again for a novice?

 

Hope I'm in the right forum for this and thanks for your patience with some pretty basic questions.

 

 

[MarkAR]

Don't know about the Bresser Mikrokular but your DSLR might be better. At £60 I'd hunt around for a used one and if it sucks then there less financial loss.

[Peter B]

Thanks for your reply which I'm afraid I don't understand.  I thought I was in the right forum:  'Astro Imaging for Beginners'  and the caption at the top encouraged me to post: 'Ask your questions here. No question too silly'.   I think I may be in the wrong place altogether.

[AstronomyUkraine]

11 hours ago, Peter B said:

As a novice, would you advise something like a simple 2x Barlow lens for eyepiece projection for my DSLR or an eyepiece projector which accepts an eyepiece?

 

As for eyepiece cameras, the most popular and widely advertised seems to be the Bresser Mirokular Full HD for around £60.  Would this be a sensible buy, again for a novice?

 

Hope I'm in the right forum for this and thanks for your patience with some pretty basic questions.

 A couple of things to take into consideration. Every telescope has a useful magnification, if you exceed that, your image quality will degrade. Your telescope manfacturer will have these details in the description for your scope online. eg. if your useful magnification might be 100. This means if the focal length of your scope is 800, the maximum focal length of eyepiece you can use is 8mm. By using a 2x barlow, you would effectively be using a 4mm eyepiece with a magnification of 200. The result would be a blurry image, but using a 16mm eyepiece and a barlow would be the same as using an 8mm eyepiece.

 

The Bresser Mikrokular is basically a webcam, and this is how I started taking video of the moon. I would try the Bresser Mikrokular with nothing attached, then try with a 2x barlow. The advantage of video over taking stills with a dslr, it is better at negating poor seeing, and with free software readily available, you can weed out poor frames to leave just the best to stack. I wouldn't expect high quality with a Bresser Mikrokular, considering most planetary cameras today cost 100s of Euros, but I started with a cheap webcam and got pretty reasonable results.

[Peter B]

Thanks for your interesting and helpful reply AstronomyUkrain.

 

So the best way to move the focus point back to the 'film plane' of the DSLR is to use an eyepiece adapter which incorporates a regular eyepiece so that magnification is within normal limits?  

 

I do realize that the Bresser Mikrokular is a cheap option but some of the You Tube videos of its use in reflector telescopes look quite reasonable, as you say, and I thought that might be a good place to start.

 

Thanks again for your help.

 

 

 

Edited November 8, 2021 by Peter B

[AstronomyUkraine]

6 hours ago, Peter B said:

So the best way to move the focus point back to the 'film plane' of the DSLR is to use an eyepiece adapter which incorporates a regular eyepiece so that magnification is within normal limits?  

Depending on the eyepiece used, you might find you need a lot of extensions to achieve focus with a dslr. The main problem with that, is the longer you extend the focuser, the less stable it becomes. I have taken many images with just a dslr attached to the focuser and this also brings more deepsky objects into play. To get close up shots of the moon or planets, I would the use webcam with a barlow, it will be more stable and give better results.

 

Another problem with eyepiece projection, the smaller the focal length of the eyepiece, the longer you need to expose for, as less light is entering the scope, or you need to use a ridiculousy high iso to achieve a short exposure time. This brings it's own set of problems, if the seeing is bad with a long exposure time, you will get blurry images. If you use a high iso, the noise will be horrendous.

Edited November 8, 2021 by AstronomyUkraine

[Peter B]

Thanks very much four advice and help.  Much appreciated.