Nikon D80 For Astrophotography

Hi everybody John here,

I have a question for all the astrophotogrphers. My friend is buying a Nikon D80 and she says that it might work for astrophotography purposses instead of the Meade deep sky imager www.meade.com/dsi_ii/index.html . If anyone has any advice or experience with the D80 it would be very helpful. :D

John,

Any digital SLR will work for astronomy as they all have a 'bulb' setting which means you can expose for as long as you like. The downside of DSLR's is a bandpass rejection filter built in which reduces the amount of light in certain wavelenghts, including the Hydrogen-Alpha lines which a lot of nebulae shine in. Bottom line is that nebulas don't show so well.

In order to connect the camera to your telescope you need a Nikon "T-Ring" which you can get cheaply from any camera shop. And also a 1.25" or 2" (depending on your focusser) nose piece like the first two items on this page;

www.iankingimaging.com/show_products.php?category=19 . The you can start capturing close ups of the Moon etc. Once you have mastered this you can move on to deep sky stuff like galxies and clusters etc.

Thanks Dave I'll take that into account.

Has anyone else got any opinions on this subject.

Hi John,
I don't have a Nikon but I do have a Canon 300D which is similar enough, what you're friend will see is that the Nikon will have a much higher field of view then the DSI, but the DSI has lass electrical noise.

You can use the Nikon without a computer at the scope, the DSI must have a computer at the scope.

If he find astrophotography is not his thing, he'll have many other uses for the Nikon, the DSI really cant be used for much else.

ok thanks for that