Images-Dave-Elder

Dave Elder

Dave started his astronomy hobby in 2000 after he retired.  At that time he was into normal visual astronomy but he changed to using a camera exclusively in May 2021.  The main reason for the change is that you can see astronomy objects better and in color than you can through an eyepiece.  To help fund this change he sold eyepieces for about $1,000.  As you can see, this is not an inexpensive hobby.

Dave uses a Celestron Evolution 8 SCT.  To that he pairs it with a HyperStar that makes the telescope a very fast scope at f1.9 rather than f10.0 or f6.3 for normal camera work, to that he adds an ASI533MC Pro camera, and the ASIAIR Pro.  The ASIAIR Pro is the actual brains of the system as it tells the scope where to point and controls the camera.  At first glance the system is a little different in that the camera is attached to the front side of the scope instead of being in the rear of the scope.  In the dark a lot of people ask what I am looking at and if they can look through the scope.  I get an odd response when I tell them no in that there isn’t any eyepiece and they are welcome to look at my IPAD to see what I am looking at.

With this very fast telescope Dave is able to use in from his backyard even with the light pollution and get nice photos but it is really better in a dark site like the location of our star parties.