Skyquest xt8 intelliscope telescope

Question

can you take photos with it

Answer 1

Yes, you can take photos with it.  But, astrophotography is about much more then taking a photo.  You need a solid and steady mount with a dead accurate tracking setup;  and that pretty much rules out the Dobs.  It is also mostly about taking photos of extremely dim objects, which means very long exposure times and the digital stacking of hundreds of long exposure photos to bring out the detail.  So while the dobs can certainly take a quick photo of the sun (with a full aperture sun filter), moon, and brighter planets;  it is not going to work well on deep space objects.

Answer 2

short answer: no.

this is a dobsonian mount, which is excellent for visual observation, but it's really not intended for photography.

Answer 3

yeah i do .. i point y camera through the lens

need more help?

here you go right in milford

https://www.highpointscientific.com/stor...

after you get your scope asktheastronomer will help you learn the night sky !

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Answer 4

Yes, but only with very short exposure times or you'll start getting star trails and blurry images. You'll probably only be able to photograph the moon through this scope as other dimmer objects take longer exposure times to bring out the detail. You'd be better off with a scope and mount that tracks objects to take pictures.

Answer 5

Spencer -

I suspect that you will be disappointed and frustrated if you try to use that scope for astrophotography. The instrument was simply not designed to do that. Can you make it work? Perhaps. But you will spend more time fiddling around than you will doing anything productive.

Astrophotography is almost a hobby unto itself. You can easily spend 3x what you put into a scope to properly equip yourself for that avocation - not to mention substantial investments in time. There are webcams and camera mounts that make it easier and less costly, but you should understand their limitations before going that way.

You have picked out a very nice scope. My recommendation is to use it for the purposes that it was designed. Then grow into astrophotography. Patience is a virtue.

Answer 6

I have an xt10i.  I have taken pictures of the Sun (with solar filter), Moon, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn with my hand held digital point and shoot camera.

This is really primitive.  I'm actually hand holding the camera to the eyepiece.  The camera moves, i bump the scope, and start over.  For the Moon shot i put on the web, 120 pictures were taken, and maybe four were usable.

One of the problems is that my camera does not have shutter control.  I get no choice.  Most stars are too dim.

Much later, i picked up the camera holder thing from Orion.  It helps a bit.

If you have a camera with shutter control, you can take longer pictures near the north pole.  Less movement, just rotation.

One of my ideas is to get my old web cam working, which can take 1.5 second exposures.  Have the computer take it's longest shots as fast as it can.  This would give me overlapping strips of the sky.  Then the bits that overlap can be added together by lining up stars and doing the rotation and translation needed in software.  This would build up long curved strips.  The Dob doesn't move.  It might be fun.  I'm not aware of any software that just does this.  It would be a project.

One of my buddies with an xt10i picked up the big Orion Atlas EQ mount.  He's been goofing with photography - and getting much better results.  Mind you, the Atlas costs more than an xt10i.  And, he can switch back to the dob mount at will.

It has been suggested that a small refractor is lighter than a big dob, so a good mount is cheaper.  The idea is that the small refractor + mount is cheaper than a mount for your bigger scope.  In practice, though, i've only seen this implemented with a high end 80mm Tak, $3500 camera, narrow band filters and second scope for tracking, mount and twin laptops - $9000 worth of stuff.  Great results for nebulae like HST, yes, but cheap?  No.

My brand new digital point and shoot camera claims it has controls for shutter control.  I haven't tried it out yet.  I didn't buy it for for this reason.  I bought it because it does video with sound - my old camera didn't do sound.  And my son plays piano and violin.  And my camcorder is analog.

If you know C, linux, have an old web cam, and want to work on a software project, let me know.  I can do it - but in ten years, it hasn't happened.  It might if i have a partner.