Can I do astrophotography with the Meade 203SC/LXD500?

Yes, you can! Prime-focus (through the telescope) astrophotography can be a very demanding task, but it is possible with the 203SC/LXD500 telescope, and there are simpler ways you can get into photography with your scope and learn as you go. This page will show you how to get started.

Getting Started
Taking photographs of the sky -- and the beautiful objects in it -- can be very satisfying. Astrophotography is as much an art as a science, and requires technical training, a good eye, and lots and lots of practice to do it well. I'm often amazed at newcomers to astronomy who think it should be "easy" to take prime-focus photos of deep-sky objects, and that just buying a telescope with a motor drive should be enough. Much like learning to play a musical instrument, when learning astrophotography the equipment is only a first step -- the rest comes through diligent practice and a commitment to the craft. And, to continue the analogy, an accomplished astrophotographer can get good results with fairly inexpensive hardware, while an undisciplined practitioner can use the most expensive equipment available and still get poor results. Be prepared to put in some serious learning time and burn lots of rolls of film, but the work WILL pay off and it won't be long before you have some beautiful pictures to show off.

First, to use the 203SC/LXD500 for photography of ANY kind, you will need at LEAST the Meade #1701 right-ascension motor drive, and preferably the Meade #1702 dual-axis drive system. Yes, you can manually turn the RA axis slow-motion control while guiding a photograph, but you'll probably never get a good shot. You need the motor drives, trust me.
Let's look at some of the ways to take photographs using your 203SC/LXD500, what additional equipment you need for each type of photography, and the kind of results you can expect.

Piggyback Photography

Equipment needed:
Piggyback Camera Mount (attaches to the tube of your SCT and provides a tripod-mount screw for your camera)
Illuminated Reticle Eyepiece (with crosshairs lit by an LED -- from Meade, Orion, others)
35mm camera and lens(es)

Piggyback photography involves attaching a camera to the tube of the telescope, and using a regular camera lens on the camera to take the photo. You can use a wide angle camera for wide-field sky shots, or a telephoto lens for more magnification. The longer the focal length of the camera lens, the more it will magnify the sky image -- and the more carefully you will have to guide the telescope to keep the stars from trailing in the picture.

The photo above was taken with a 35mm camera attached to the outside tube of the 203SC, with an 85mm lens. It's a 20-minute exposure. For exposures up to about 5 minutes with short focal-length lenses (up to about 50mm), you can often just let the scope motor run without guiding the telescope, and it will do a pretty good job. With longer lenses or longer exposures, you will need to guide the telescope during the exposure using the illuminated reticle eyepiece.

Why do I need to Guide my Telescope?
Even the most carefully built, expensive telescopes in the world are not accurate enough to perfectly track the stars for long periods of time. Even very tiny mechanical imperfections in drive gears cause Periodic Error, a sort of oscillating motion that makes the right-ascension drive run slightly fast then slightly slow. If your telescope is not perfectly polar aligned, it will also drift in declination, and possibly produce some field rotation (the stars move around the center of the image). The only way to correct for these mechanical and alignment errors is to GUIDE the telescope. You can guide manually by watching a star in a crosshair eyepiece (with an illuminated crosshair reticle so you can see them in the dark!), keeping the star in exactly the same spot throughout the exposure by issuing corrections to your motor drives with the drive controller. You can also purchase a CCD device called an Autoguider, which uses the light-sensitive CCD chip to do the same thing you would do manually: after a guide star is located on the CCD, the autoguider watches the star during the exposure. If it moves from its original position, the autoguider sends corrections to the drive system until the star is back where it belongs. Autoguiders can be somewhat difficult to learn and use, but they're much more accurate than you ever will be, and much more patient -- they can guide for hours and hours without getting tired or bumping the tripod!

The longer the focal length of the lens attached to your camera, the more accurately you will have to guide. With a 50mm or shorter camera lens, you can check the position of the guide star every few seconds and nudge it back to the proper location using the drive controls. For telephoto lenses, you'll need to keep the guide star pretty close to it's initial position, and watch it almost all of the time. You can also use a CCD autoguider to do the watching for you, so you can sit back and have a cup of coffee while the photograph is being taken!
Set the f-stop on your camera lens to wide open. Put the camera on the "B" (bulb) setting, and use a locking cable release to open and close the shutter. Once the shutter is open, don't touch the telescope or mount -- nothing but the drive controller -- to keep vibrations to a minimum. Use a fairly fast film, such as Kodak Gold 400 or Ektachrome E200 if you prefer slides. Take several different exposures for varying lengths of time (called "bracketing"). Keep good notes of what you took a photo of, what kind of film and lens were used, lens f-stop settings, and exposure times so you can learn from both your mistakes and successes.

Prime-Focus (through the telescope) Photography

Equipment needed:
Off-Axis Guider (Meade #777 or similar)
T-adapter for your 35mm camera type
Illuminated Reticle Eyepiece
CCD Autoguider (optional, but recommended!)

If you read the section above on piggyback photography, you'll remember I mentioned that the longer the focal length of the lens, the more accurately you have to guide...attaching your camera directly to your telescope means using a focal length of about 2000mm, meaning you have to guide very accurately indeed! Even the slightest periodic error or slight movement of a guide star will show up in the photo as trailed stars, and ruin the image. However, prime-focus photography is the only way to get those detailed photos of deep-sky objects like galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters.

The photo above is a prime-focus shot of the Pleiades, shot for 12 minutes with no guiding corrections done at all. You can see the periodic error in the mount -- those little back-and-forth squiggles that are supposed to be stars!


The photo above was taken with the same 203SC setup, only this time I used the #777 Meade Off-axis Guider with an illuminated reticle eyepiece to manually guide the photograph for 20 minutes. As you can see, the stars are still wiggly lines, showing that I didn't guide very well...I also managed to bump the tripod during the exposure. It was after taking this photo that I realized how difficult manual guiding can be, and determined that I would get a CCD autoguider to make the guiding adjustments for me! Some folks have obtained excellent results with manual guiding -- perhaps I just don't have the patience for it. Still, the shot shows progress from earlier attempts, with good detail in the nebula, and shows that my focusing technique was on track...


Now we're getting somewhere! The shot above was not nearly long enough (only 10 minutes) to show the Flame Nebula NGC2024) well, but it has nice, round stars and was perfectly guided -- thanks to the 201XT CCD autoguider! The autoguider has a fairly steep learning curve itself, and is by no means a quick and simple solution...don't expect to buy one, plug it in, and get perfect astrophotos! You need to learn how to select appropriate guide stars in the off-axis guider view, make an eyepiece that is parfocal with the autoguider so you can get well-focused stars (the 201XT is very sensitive to focus, and will not guide well at all with stars that are even a little bit out of focus), and learn the quirks of the 201XT as well. I'll have another web page up detailing my experiences with the 201XT soon -- for now, it suffices to say that it took me several rolls of film to get the shot above, and to get the 201XT to consistently guide for any length of time. Now that I have the procedure down, it's much easier to work with, and does very well!


When it all comes together, after months of learning, experimenting, and making mistakes, it's a great feeling! This shot of M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, as a 40-minute exposure on Kodak PJ800, shot through the 203SC/LXD500 and guided using the 201XT autoguider. When I got the roll of film processed and saw this print, I nearly fell off of my chair -- it was so beautiful! What does it take to get a photo like this?
* Replace/modify your tripod so it's nice and steady, with no vibration
* Open up the LXD500 GEM, re-lube it, and adjust it so it turns smoothly with no backlash
* Find a good dark-sky site
* Practice polar aligning (using the drift method) so you are VERY ACCURATELY polar aligned
* Learn how to center a good guide star in the off-axis guider
* Learn how to use the 201XT CCD autoguider
* Shoot 4 exposures of the same object, and hope one comes out!

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Questions? Comments? E-mail me! lefevre@midway.com