K-5 & a Telescope

Greetings people of Pentax

I am a keen amature astronomer and love pointing my K-5 skyward on a clear night with my 0GPS-1 Attached.

I am looking also for a telescope to feed my passion, however I would love to be able to attach my K-5 to it so that I can photograph what is seen and basically use the telescope as a huge lens...

I have searched Google and come up dry, maybe one of you can point me in the right direction.

Many thanks

Stew

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"Intellectual brilliance is no guarantee against being dead wrong" Carl Sagan

Hi Stew. This link is from a very popular bird forum but they have an excellent digiscoping section too : link

Looks like the Skywatcher 80ED would be the one.

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http://frogfish.smugmug.com/ Pentax. Pentax DA*300/4, Cosina 55/1.2, Lens Baby Composer Pro & Edge 80, AFA x1.7, Metz 50 af1.
Nikon. D800. D600. Sigma 500/4.5, Nikon 300/2.8 VRII, Sigma 120-300/2.8, Zeiss Distagon ZF2 21/2.8, Zeiss Distagon ZF2 35/2.0, Sigma 50/1.4, Nikkor 85/1.8, Nikon TC20EIII, Nikon TC14EII, Kenko x1.4, Sigma 2.0

There is a user on here with a telescope that he uses for birding, but I can't remember his name sorry You might find it via Google advanced search on this site and telescope.

He's posted pictures of his rig in this thread link on the US forum under the user name Squier.

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Half Man... Half Pentax ... Half Cucumber

Pentax K-1 + K-5 and some other stuff

Algi

A friend of mine uses a Celestron Astromaster 114 with "I think a T mount" to connect his Nikon DLSR and gets quite stunning shots of bird/animal life, albeit they are upside down when focusing on them.

If you're still stuck, I'll be seeing him again about the end of this month and I'll photograph his setup


regards
Bernard

Reading down the recent activity came across the following :-

https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/topic/telescope-adaptor-32615



Bernard

Basically you have 2 options for linking a camera to a telescope and using the 'scope optics, one being a T mount adaptor which allows the telescope to take the place of the eyepiece, with this you just get the magnification of the main lens in a refractor (or mirror with a reflector). The second option allows the camera to "look through" the eyepiece (which is itself a magnifying optic). This gives much more magnification, but is more difficult to do.

Or for a 3rd option, if you have a guided astronomical telescope which is accurately aligned, you can "piggyback" the camera on the telescope tube, so the camera is just being guided but using a normal camera lens rather than the telescope optics. This gives the option for guided shots of much longer duration than an OGPS-1 will allow.

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K3ii, DA16-85, DA35mm Limited, FA77mm Limited, 55mm f1.8 K, 135mm f3.5 M, DA300, DA 1.4 HD TC,
DA16-45, Sigma 15mm f2.8. Cosina 100mm f3.5 macro

excelent feed back thanks guys....

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"Intellectual brilliance is no guarantee against being dead wrong" Carl Sagan

I believe both these options can theoretically be done either with or without a lens on the camera. In reality the choice can be limited somewhat by the degree of movement of the telescopes focusing control.

IIRC when I tried working without lens or eyepiece (prime focus) on my Newtonian I found the camera couldn't get close enough to get infinity focused (Not much use for astronomy!)

One of my eyepieces (a zoom model) has T2 threads built in enabling me to get some shots of Jupiter's moons. Shame the K100 batteries failed before I manged to get the focus spot on.

I keep promising myself I'll have another go using the K7 (& live view) but too many other thing crop up and I no longer have access to my previous dark(ish) sky site...

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Mike
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Pentax:K5ii, K7, K100D, DA18-55, DA10-17, DA55-300, DA50-200, F100-300, F50, DA35 AL, 4* M50, 2* M135, Helicoid extension, Tak 300 f4 (& 6 film bodies)
3rd Party: Bigmos (Sigma 150-500mm OS HSM),2* 28mm, 100mm macro, 28-200 zoom, 35-80 zoom, 80-200 zoom, 80-210 zoom, 300mm M42, 600 mirror, 1000-4000 scope, 50mm M42, enlarger lenses, Sony & micro 4/3 cameras with various PK mounts, Zenit E...
Far to many tele-converters, adapters, project parts & extension tubes etc.

.[size=11:].Flickr• WPF• Panoramio

I also hope to start doing some astrophotography this year. However the more I read into it the more complex it seems to be to get good images.

This UK-centric astronomy forum seems to have a lot of useful information on astronomy imaging: link.

On reading this forum I decided to follow their recommendation and buy the book "Making every photon count" by Steve Richards. Reading through this book has given me a good grounding on the various factors that have to be considered in getting good images.

I now have in place:
- A good mount (EQ-5) with autoguiding potential.
- A Celestron Schmitt Casegrain telescope
- A Celestron T-mount adapter that places the camera in the prime focus of the SCT.
- Another Celestron eyepiece T-mount adapter that permits the camera to view through some eyepieces (although I may attach the camera direct to my new Baader Hyperion eyeypiece).

Plenty of stuff, I just now need time to try and experiment with it.

some suggestions

budget scope

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/clearance/celestron-c90-mak.html

i have one of these and it is brilliant for size

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/william-optics/william-optics-megrez-72-fd-ddg-a...

then choose a t mount adapter dependant on the eyepiece diameter, normally 1.25" or 2"

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/adaptors/flo-125-inch-t-mount-camera-adapter.htm...
http://www.firstlightoptics.com/adaptors/flo-2-inch-t-mount-camera-adapter.html

and attach to camera with a t-ring

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/adaptors/t-rings.html

you will need to seek advice in relation to focus travel, some scopes, not the above in my judgment, had problems in that the amount of focus travel to enable an attached slr to focus was not sufficient.

by the way, will absolutely second Mera suggestion regarding astronomy forum site stargazers lounge, absolutely brilliant site and you may notice linked to firstlightoptics who i think are one of the best suppliers in the uk.