I have tried to strike a balance between quality, capability and price while assembling my astrophotography setup. As far as I know there are no complete “kits” designed to acquire deep space images. Each component varies widely in price and and in many cases your final image is only as good as the your worst piece of equipment. In general you need the following:
- “Astrophotography grade” equatorial mount with adequate weight capacity
- Telescope
- Camera
- Software to stack and process images
- Computer for image acquisition and processing
Many people are curious about my exact setup and total costs so here it is
Orion Sirius EQ-G equatorial mount – 30 lb capacity with Go-To feature – $1200
Explore Scientific 80mm Aprochromatic Triplet Refractor – $700
Canon 70D DSLR – ~$1000 for body only
T-thread adaptor and spacer – to attach camera to telescope ~$25
Nebulosity version 4 – Astrophotography software for photo acquisition and processing – $95
Macbook Air – refurbished $1200
Astronomik CLS filter – light pollution filter -$130
Explore Scientific Field Flattener – Corrects distortions at the edge of the frame – $150
This is what I used for the majority of my deep space images. There is also an auto guider and 50mm small refractor in the picture but I haven’t really used that yet. I am starting to experiment with a new 6 inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope. I also use an 8 inch Newtonian Reflector and an Orion Starshoot 5MP Solar System Color Camera.