![]() ![]() This includes understanding how to polar align an equatorial mount, how to focus your camera on a faint deep-sky object, and how to attach your camera to the telescope. No matter what type of photography experience you have going in, deep-sky astrophotography through a telescope will have a number of challenges to overcome early on. I am not saying that there is anything wrong with starting your astrophotography journey with a Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope (SCT) or Newtonian Reflector, but I believe you will have some additional challenges to overcome early on. These days, I use a refractor telescope for 90% of my astrophotography. If I could go back and I do it all over again, I would have chosen a compact, wide-field refractor to start astrophotography with. In my experience, a compact, wide-field refractor offers an improved user experience over the other telescope types during the acquisition stages of astrophotography.įor example, I began taking my first deep-space images with a reflector telescope. The type of telescopeyou choose early on can have a dramatic impact on the complexity of your deep-sky astrophotography setup. This type of astrophotography requires the most advanced equipment and demands a careful setup routine. In the beginning stages, I made critical errors in selecting and setting up equipment.įrom the beginning, my goal was to capture deep-sky images of nebulae and galaxies. Throughout the past 8 years of deep-sky astrophotography, I’ve made lots of mistakes. ![]() My first refractor telescope for astrophotography. If you’re interested in photographing nebulae and large galaxies in the night sky through a telescope, this article should shed some light on the decision-making process ahead of you. ![]() In fact, in many ways, a high-quality apochromat is very much like a telephoto lens. Instead, astrophysicists use special detectors to observe gamma rays and to figure out where they come from in the sky.If you’re getting started in deep-sky astrophotography, I believe that a compact apochromatic (APO) refractor telescope is the best possible choice.Ī compact APO refractor is portable and lightweight, making it a smoother transition from the camera lenses you may be used to. They go straight through optics used for other wavelengths, making them impossible to reflect or refract. ![]() Gamma rays are the universe’s most energetic form of light. Engineers at NASA’s Goddard and Marshall Space Flight Centers have designed mirrors like these for missions like the X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) and the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE). Since there’s a lot of empty space in the middle of a single paraboloid, X-ray mirrors incorporate multiple mirrors as nested onion-like shells. This is called a grazing incidence mirror. To detect them, engineers turn the mirrors on their sides so the X-rays can skip off the surface. X-rays can simply pass through the atoms that make up most telescope mirrors. X-ray mirrors use the slightly angled side of the paraboloid. The Webb mirror, for example, is coated with a thin layer of gold so that it can reflect infrared light. Telescope mirrors are coated with different materials depending on the color of the light they need to reflect. (Backyard telescopes can also have mirrors, too.)Īn X-ray Mirror Assembly built for the X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission consists of a primary and secondary mirror, each containing 812 nested foil mirror segments. Large mirrors can be made thinner and lighter than lenses of the same size, which makes reflecting scopes ideal for sending to space. Reflecting telescopesĪ telescope that uses a mirror as its primary optical element is called a reflecting telescope. The first telescopes, developed in the 1600s, were refractors, as are many backyard telescopes today.īut very large lenses make refracting telescopes large and heavy, which makes them difficult to use in space. Like eyeglasses, the lenses bend, or refract, light passing through them. Refracting telescopesĪ telescope using a lens for its main optical element is called a refracting telescope. The larger a mirror or lens, the more light it collects, and the better its ability to detect fainter objects. The size of the main mirror or lens determines how well a telescope can collect light. Astronomers observe distant cosmic objects using telescopes that employ mirrors and lenses to gather and focus light. ![]()
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