jrista et al, Why Astrophotography?

[jrista]

Boy am I feeling old.. Astrophotography was the first thing that interested me. I bought an OM-1, had a 12.5" reflector made, and bought a Bill Schaefer mount. Used to cook my film myself.

I am so behind times, it is amazing how technology has taken over. I got into computers when analog to digital was coming into play. Writing software for machines.

I still have all my old equipment. Is there a way to computerize the old Schaefer mount. It has an old drive corrector that works. But, it is ancient.

Been thinking about having the mirror re-coated on the reflector, and playing around with it some.

Gary

Scott Rosen [email protected] might be able to help you with your mount. His site says he has put steppers on his Schaefer.

You need more than just steppers, though. You need to track accurately enough to actually take long exposures. Even if you purchase a mount like an Atlas or ZEQ25, you still need to guide in order to be able to expose for more than about a minute or so. Just slapping steppers on a mount will get you longer than 20-30 second exposures, but not long enough to really do any kind of deep exposures that are necessary to lift detail above the noise floor (which is actually quite high on a DSLR). You would also need to jury-rig something that made those stepper motors controllable via a guider...either via ASCOM Pulse Guiding or an ST-4 guide port.

It's probably best just to buy a used lower and mount. You can find a ZEQ25 for maybe $500 used, if that if you find a good deal. A used Atlas or EQ6 can be found as low as $700 used. A Sirius/EQ5 might be found for as littel as $500-600. All of those mounts are guidable...the only real issue would be capacity, but so long as your not using larger scopes, you should be fine. You could even get an AT6RC for $400 new, or as little as $250 used, and have a real nice Ritchey-Chretein astrograph.