12 Best Telescopes for Astrophotography (With Camera)

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Do you know what is more exciting than looking through your telescope’s eyepiece to catch captivating views of celestial bodies in the night sky? Taking pictures of those captivating views and sharing them with others.

Astrophotography, also known as astronomical imaging, is the art of taking photographs of celestial objects, ranging from landscape picture pops to close-ups of distant deep-sky objects.

Some of the best telescopes for astrophotography include the Unistellar eVscope eQuinox smart telescope, Celestron AstroMaster 130EQ Newtonian reflector, and SkyMaster EvoStar 120 APO doublet refractor.

Finding a telescope that not only meets your imaging needs but also aligns with your skill level is essential. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore some of the best telescopes specifically designed for astrophotography. From entry-level options perfect for beginners to advanced models favored by experts, we’ll delve into a range of telescopes that offer the precision and image quality needed to capture the beauty of the night sky.

Our Team’s top picks for the best telescopes for astrophotography

Best telescopes for all types of astrophotography

Whether your interest lies in deep-sky astrophotography of galaxies and nebulae or taking high-magnification shots of our solar system’s objects, some of the best telescopes to use include:

1. Unistellar eVscope eQuinox smart telescope

Unistellar eVscope eQuinox is a smart digital reflector telescope with amplified vision, auto-field detection, and photography capabilities.

The Unistellar eVscope eQuinox is one of the best astrophotography telescopes, as it is a 4.5-inch, f/4 Newtonian reflector with a camera sensor that tracks and stacks images in real-time to produce the final image. With this smart telescope, you can enjoy the beauty of deep space.

The eQuinox digital telescope features Enhanced Vision technology, which makes it 100x more powerful than a regular scope. 

The technology allows for live observation of faint objects due to the live accumulation of light received from them. Thus, galaxies, nebulae, and other deep-sky objects become visible, detailed, and colorful.

The telescope also features light pollution reduction, allowing you astounding images of targets even in light-polluted skies.

The telescope features autonomous field detection, a system that helps it instantly recognize objects in its field of view by comparing what it sees with a coordinates database of tens of millions of stars.

Everything works with an app. With a tap of the app, you’ll have access to a catalog of 5,000 objects. The eQuinox telescope will recommend spectacular targets for you and launch you into deep-space observations within minutes.

Also, the eVscope eQuinox is very portable, allowing you to carry it around easily. The telescope is also easy to use. It allows you to enjoy astrophotography without fiddling with camera settings.  

Pros of the Unistellar eVscope eQuinox telescope

  • Easy to use
  • Portable and easy to carry around
  • Produces amazing 4.8 megapixels images 
  • Self-aligning software that helps you locate objects easily
  • Deals with light pollution 

Cons of the eVscope eQuinox telescope

  • Relatively expensive
  • Narrow field of view

Read more: Unistellar eVscope Review

2. Skywatcher EvoStar 120

Sky-Watcher EvoStar 120 APO Doublet Refractor is a compact, portable optical tube excellent for astrophotography and visual astronomy.

Not long ago, only advanced astronomers could access astrophotography telescopes like the Sky-Watcher EvoStar 120 APO Doublet refractor. 

It is a powerful yet versatile telescope that you can use as a budding novice and continue using when you become a seasoned astrophotographer.

The SkyWatcher EvoStar 120 refracting telescope is an excellent choice for visual astronomy and astrophotography. The telescope’s large 120mm aperture increases resolution, giving you sharp images. 

With the EvoStar 120, lunar and planetary phenomena appear in seemingly 3D-like high definition, and aggregates of stars within galaxies, nebulae, and open clusters appear brilliant.

The scope features a doublet objective, including one synthetic fluorite element that provides excellent color correction for visual and photographic uses. So, you can shoot tack-sharp images with accurate color and minimal aberrations. 

The scope comes with a 10:1 dual-speed Crayford focus assembly, so finding focus is a breeze regardless of the eyepiece or camera.

It also comes with everything you need. These include a 2” Dielectric Diagonal, two LET eyepieces (5mm ad 25mm), a 1.25” adapter, mounting rings, a dovetail, a finderscope, and a foam-lined aluminum hard case.

Pros of the EvoStar 120 refractor telescope 

  • Easy to use
  • Powerful telescope suitable for advanced astronomers
  • Excellent optical performance

Cons of the EvoStar 120mm refractor telescope

  • Relatively large

Best beginner telescopes for astrophotography

Interestingly, astrophotography is not only for advanced astronomers. With the right astrophotography equipment, someone new to the hobby can take mesmerizing shots of celestial bodies.

Some of the best beginner telescopes for astrophotography are:

3. Celestron Nexstar 5SE

The Celestron Nexstar 5SE is a computerized telescope that combines 5-ich Schmidt-Cassegrain optics with updated technology and the latest features for an amazing stargazing experience for beginners and advanced astronomers.

The Celestron Nexstar 5SE Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope (SCT) is very popular in visual astronomy and astrophotography camps as it is a user-friendly beginner scope.

It features the StarAlign technology, ensuring you will not have problems aligning your telescope. You simply center any three bright objects in the eyepiece, and NexStar SE will align with the night sky, ready to locate thousands of stars, galaxies, and more.

The telescope also features a fully automated go-to mount, which locates and tracks objects for you. You simply lock onto your chosen object, and the mount will ensure it remains in your field of view, allowing you to focus on imaging. 

The Celestron NexStar 5SE has a large aperture (5 inches), providing excellent light-gathering ability. 

The focal ratio of f/10 makes it a fast telescope suited for lunar and planetary astrophotography. NexStar 5SE will impress you with detailed shots of the surface phenomena of the moon and planets of the solar system.

Pros of Celestron NexStar 5SE

  • Easy to set up and use
  • Large aperture to give more detail 
  • GoTo mount for automatically tracking targets

Con of Celestron NexStar 5SE

  • Not suitable for long-exposure astrophotography 

Read the full review here: Celestron NexStar 5SE Telescope

Best telescope for moon photography

The moon is very approachable, so many people’s astrophotography experience starts with photographing the moon.

Attaching a DSLR camera directly to a telescope is also the most effective system for lunar photography. Some of the best telescopes for lunar photography are:

4. Sky-Watcher Skymax 127 Mak

The Sky-Watcher Skymax 127mm Maksutov Cassegrain telescope is a long focal-length Mak well-suited for shooting the moon and planets.

The Skymax series of Mak optical tubes have matched primary and secondary mirrors that deliver sharp, high-contrast views. 

With its large aperture of 127mm and long focal length of 1500mm, this Skymax Maksutov Cassegrain telescope delivers better lunar and planetary detail than many other telescopes.

The telescope has a 94% reflectivity rating that drives sharp detail and utilizes a fully-baffled tube, which prevents stray light from interfering with your viewing experience.  

Also, the telescope mounts to most photographic tripods as it comes with a standard Vixen-style dovetail and a ¼-20 tripod thread under each dovetail bar.

It’s possible to purchase the Skymax 127 Maksutov Cassegrain telescope with a GoTo mount. Having a GoTo mount means you do not have to manually adjust the telescope to track the apparent movement of objects in the sky. 

The scope effortlessly locates objects in the night sky and automatically tracks them, keeping them in your view all night long.

Pros of Sky-Watcher Skymax 127 Mak

  • Has a large aperture 
  • Has a long focal length to deliver high-quality optics
  • Go-to mount to track objects in the sky automatically

Cons of Sky-Watcher Skymax 127 Mak

  • Not suited for long exposure astrophotography 

Read the full review here: Sky-Watcher Skymax 127 Telescope Review

5. Sky-Watcher Skymax 180mm Maksutov-Cassegrain

The Sky-Watcher Skymax 180mm Mak delivers high-quality images for planetary and lunar astrophotography.

The Sky-Watcher is a large-aperture compound telescope. The telescope is king in terms of optical quality. Its 180mm aperture gives it incredible resolving power for creating crisp pictures. 

This Sky-Watcher Skymax telescope features a 2,700mm focal length, which is 5 – 7 times longer than other scopes. This increases its magnification to give more details when doing astrophotography.

The scope also features Sky-Watcher’s signature Metallic High-transmission Coatings (MHTC), allowing it to deliver superior contrast and tack-sharp images. 

The scope also does excellently in eliminating chromatic aberration. So, an outline of unwanted color will not distort your image.

The combination of a large aperture and long focal length makes the Skymax Mak an excellent telescope for planetary and lunar astrophotography. 

To take detailed photographs of the moon to explore lunar mountains, craters, and other lunar surface features, the Skymax 180mm Mak is the grab-and-go telescope. 

The scope includes a V-style dovetail, an 8×50 finderscope, and a 2” 90-degree Star diagonal. However, it doesn’t come with eyepieces, a mount, or a tripod. Given its price, you’ll expect it to include these accessories.

Pros of the Skymax 180mm Mak

  • Large aperture
  • Very long focal length
  • Virtually eliminates color fringing 
  • Produce excellent quality images

Cons of the Skymax 180mm Mak

  • Relatively short on accessories 
  • Relatively expensive

Best telescopes for galaxy photography

Short focal length telescopes have many advantages for galaxy photography.

Specifically, the best telescopes for photographing galaxies include:

6. Orion 6-inch f/4 Newtonian Astrograph Reflector Telescope 

The Orion 6-inch f/4 Newtonian is loaded with useful features for capturing high-resolution images of deep-sky objects like galaxies. 

This Orion Newtonian reflector lets you take high-resolution images of deep-sky objects with short exposure times, ensuring outstanding results in less time.

The telescope’s 6-inch parabolic mirror has a 610mm focal length. So, this is a fast f/4 telescope offering a wide-field astrophotography experience.

It features a substantial 63mm minor axis secondary mirror that provides excellent field illumination to CCD and DSLR cameras for efficient astrophotography performance. 

Also, both primary and secondary mirrors boast 94% reflectivity coatings to ensure better-quality images.

The telescope is well-built. It features an Orion-exclusive steel reinforcement plate under the focuser, which eliminates flexure when heavy cameras and other imaging gear are attached.

This Orion Newtonian reflector is compact and weighs only 12.7 lbs. So, it’s conveniently portable and lightweight, making handling easy. You also will not need to invest in a huge mount to support it. 

The telescope comes with two heavy-duty hinged tube rings, an 8×50 finderscope, and a dovetail mounting bar.

However, being a fast Newtonian reflector telescope, this Orion telescope suffers comatic aberration. So, a coma corrector is highly recommended to eliminate coma for optimized imaging performance. 

Pros of the Orion 6-inch f/4 Newtonian reflector

  • Gives high-resolution results with short exposures
  • Compact and lightweight 
  • Relatively inexpensive

Cons of the Orion 6-inch f/4 Newtonian

  • Suffers severe optical distortion (coma)

7. Sky-Watcher Quattro 200P Imaging Newtonian

The Sky-Watcher Quattro 200P Imaging Newtonian is a large aperture 8-inch reflector optical tube specifically designed for astrophotography.

The Sky-Watcher Quattro is a fast f/4 Newtonian reflector telescope that produces a beautiful field of view, excellent for both visual astronomy and astrophotography. 

The telescope features an oversized secondary mirror capable of illuminating APS-C and full-frame DSLR cameras without vignetting. 

The mirrors have an aluminum coating producing 94% reflectivity to maximize light transmission. The interior of the optical uses knife-edge baffles to absorb stray lights. All these work to create sharp images.

With its f/4 focal ratio, this astrograph captures greater detail in shorter exposure times. It produces an exposure 6x faster than an f/10 optical tube. This lets you maximize every hour of precious time, giving you more time to photograph the galaxies and other deep-sky objects.

The galaxy astrophotography telescope has many accessories. First is a 2-inch dual-speed Crayford-style focuser, ensuring you never miss focus.

Also included are tube rings, a Vixen-style dovetail, and an 8×50 finderscope. A coma corrector is available separately. 

This is a highly recommended accessory because the parabolic mirrors of Newtonians produce some aberrations around the edge of the field of view.

The Quattro is also budget-friendly. In fact, it’s one of the most affordable f/4 focal ratio telescopes you’ll find. 

Pros of the Sky-watcher Quattro Newtonian

  • Gives high-resolution results with short exposures
  • Relatively inexpensive

Cons of the Sky-Watcher Quattro Newtonian

  • Severe optical aberration around the edges of the field of view

Best telescope for planet photography

Capturing detailed images of planets require serious magnification. Thus, the best telescope for planets photography needs a healthy combination of aperture and focal length.

Specifically, the best telescopes for planetary photography include:

8. Sky-Watcher Startravel 120 EQ3-2

The Sky-Watcher Startravel 120 telescope is a portable f/5 refractor telescope that gives a wide field and high contrast for planetary photography.

The Skytravel 120 EQ3-2 telescope is perfect for anyone looking for a small but powerful scope for astrophotography. The scope uses two-element, fully multi-coated lenses to provide excellent terrestrial viewing, visual astronomy, and astrophotography. 

Its relatively large 120mm aperture gathers enough light to allow you see more details. With this aperture and a 558mm focal length, the scope “zooms” into planets for a closer look.

The Startravel telescope produces crisp and detailed images at a reasonable price, making it a good first telescope or a traveling telescope for more advanced amateur astronomers. 

While the Sky-Watcher Startravel telescope is well-suited for lunar and planetary astrophotography, it may be useful for some deep-sky astrophotography.

The telescope comes with two eyepieces (10mm and 2mm) and a Sky-Watcher AZ3 mount that provides slow-motion controls on the vertical and horizontal axes for precise targeting.

You may also like: Equatorial mount vs Alt-azimuth mount (Read this first).

Also included is a 45-degree correct-image prism, a red dot finder, a lightweight aluminum tripod, and a large accessory tray (that provides a convenient storage place for the eyepieces and other gear).

Pros of the Sky-Watcher Startravel telescope 

  • Large aperture for higher resolution
  • Portable, compact, and lightweight
  • Budget-friendly

Cons of the Skywatcher Startravel telescope

  • Suffers some chromatic aberration

9. Explore Scientific ED127 Essential Series Air-Spaced Triplet Refractor 

The Explore Scientific ED127 Essential Series air-spaced triplet refractor is a proven performer that gives good views of deep-sky objects and detailed images of planets.

The ED 127 Essential series air-spaced refractor is designed to deliver beautiful details of objects in the night sky. First, the scope’s ample 127mm aperture gives it good light-gathering ability.

It combines FCD1 HOYA extra-low dispersion (ED) glass and proprietary EMD-enhanced multi-layer coating on all optical surfaces. Then there’s the air-spaced triplet optical design that virtually eliminates chromatic aberrations.

With its aperture and apochromatic performance, the ED127 Essential series air-spaced refractor showcases fine details of the moon’s surface and the solar system’s planets.

The telescope is also well-built. The cradle rings feature a built-in handle for secure handling. The top face of the handle has a slot for attaching the DSLR camera so you can take shots of the incredible views. The bottom of the cradle has a Vixen-style late for attaching to an equatorial mount.

Pros of the ED127 Essential Series air-spaced refractor

  • Large aperture
  • Produces high-quality images
  • Impressive build quality

Cons of the ED127 Essential Series air-spaced refractor

  • Relatively expensive 

Best telescope for photographing nebulae

Some of the best telescopes for photographing nebulae include:

10. Vaonis STELLINA Observation Station and Hybrid Telescope

The Vaonis STELLINA observation station and hybrid telescope is a futuristic scope good for solar or group observation and imaging.  

The Vaonis STELLINA does not look like a telescope. It does not have an eyepiece or a finderscope which are permanent fixtures of traditional telescopes.

It is a smart telescope that is controlled entirely using a smartphone. You simply tap the app to choose a target. The futuristic Vaonis STELLINA points at it, focuses on it, and presents the object’s image in the app.

The wireless connection means you can have the telescope outside while you observe and take shots of celestial bodies from the comfort of your home. The Vaonis STELLINA allows connecting up to ten (10) devices so you can enjoy astrophotography with other astronomers. 

The telescope uses a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensor to produce high-resolution 6.4 megapixels images. The image format is JPEG and Raw, with the former being easy to share on social media. 

The Vaonis STELLINA makes deep-sky astrophotography a joy. When imaging nebulae, the telescope presents them in their breathtaking beauty. One of the most popular candidates is the ring nebula. Others include the Lagoon nebula and the Omega nebula.

Pros of the Vaonis STELLINA telescope

  • Makes astronomy easy
  • Does not need accessories like eyepieces, telescope filers, and finderscopes
  • Can connect up to ten devices for group imaging
  • Features a motorized GoTo mount that automatically tracks objects
  • Can remotely control the scope

Cons of the Vaonis STELLINA telescope

  • Very expensive
  • The database has relatively few deep-sky objects

Read also: Which Is Better: eVscope or Stellina? (Answered!)

11. SVBONY SV550 Telescope

The SVBONY SV550 telescope is an 80mm F6 APO triplet refractor optical tube assembly (OTA) for deep sky astrophotography.

The SVBONY SV550 has an 80mm aperture, giving it a decent 1.45 arc seconds resolving power. In addition, it features triplet apochromatic optics, which reduces edge dispersion to increase image quality significantly (by 15.8%). 

The APO has multiple light barriers inside the inner wall of the lens barrel and the focusing seat, all designed in the pursuit of extinction. 

It has a 2.5” focusing base that reduces the vignetting problem when connecting to a full-frame camera. So, the telescope gives bright, high-contrast images, which allow you to explore galaxies and nebulae with better graphic clarity. 

The SVBONY SV550 telescope comes with a 180mm dovetail plate that is easy to set and makes your scope more stable. 

The scope also comes with an equatorial mount. This makes it suitable for long-exposure photography, as it effectively tracks a sky object and keeps it in the field of view.

Pros of the SVBONY SV550 

  • Creates high-quality images
  • Impressive build quality
  • Comes with an equatorial mount for easy tracking
  • Relatively inexpensive

Cons of the SVBONY SV550

  • Fairly robust

Best budget-friendly telescope for astrophotography 

You do not have to break the bank to enjoy astrophotography, as many budget-friendly telescopes exist. Some of these are:

12. Celestron Inspire 100AZ

The Celestron Inspire 100AZ refractor is the ultimate budget-friendly telescope to observe and shoot celestial bodies.

The Inspire AZ refractor is Celestron’s best beginner telescope. It is one of the best telescopes for astrophotography when on a tight budget. 

It is astoundingly powerful for a low-cost telescope. The Inspire AZ refractor has a decent 100mm aperture that lets it gather enough light. 

The optical tube features fully coated glass optics for maximum light transmission, creating bright, detailed views of all the best celestial objects.

Some color fringing is noticeable, but this is expected for a low-cost telescope. 

The telescope comes with everything you need to start astronomy immediately. These include two eyepieces (10mm and 20mm), an erect image star diagonal, a red LED flashlight, a finderscope, and an integrated smartphone adapter. 

The telescope also has a large finderscope, making locating targets in the sky easy. The Inspire 100AZ can help you explore the solar system and beyond. You can observe and capture the moon, Saturn’s rings, and even deep-sky objects like Orion Nebula and Andromeda Galaxy. 

Using Inspire’s universal smartphone adapter, you can connect any phone to the telescope’s eyepiece and snap incredible images of celestial bodies. 

Pros of the Celestron Inspire 100AZ

  • Budget-friendly
  • Easy to use
  • Connects to a smartphone to take photographs of celestial bodies

Cons of the Celestron Inspire 100AZ

  • Better suited for only short-exposure astrophotography
  • Suffers some aberration

How to choose a telescope for astrophotography? Factors to consider

If you’re enthralled by beautiful pictures of celestial objects and want to try your hand at nighttime photography, you should be careful when buying your telescope.

Factors to consider before buying a telescope for astrophotography include:

Optical Tube Assembly (OTA)

Optical Tube Assembly (OTA) is the telescope’s tube where the optics are housed. The OTA is a standalone telescope tube that does not come with the mount and tripod. Adding an OTA is a great way to gain a new field of view or upgrade your aperture and optics.

Specialized scopes for astrophotography are usually sold independently as OTA without the mount. So, in astrophotography, you have to build your telescope setup. That means buying the OTA, mount, and other needed stuff separately.

There are two types of OTA – refractors and reflectors. Refractors use lenses to capture light, while reflectors use mirrors. 

Lenses (and mirrors)

A telescope is nothing more than a pair of lenses mounted in a tube. The scopes use lenses (and mirrors) to gather and focus light from the night sky to form images.

In telescopes with lenses, the lens at the front gathers and bends light from sky objects, focusing an image for the smaller lens. The smaller lens then magnifies the image and focuses it for your eyes.

Source: NASA.gov

In telescopes that use mirrors (reflecting scopes), a larger mirror at the bottom of the tube gathers and reflects light to the smaller mirror. The small mirror magnifies the image, reflecting the light into the eyepiece.

Source: NASA.gov

The light from the second lens (mirror) is what you see when you look through your telescope’s eyepiece.

Powerful telescopes have big objective lenses. The bigger the objective lens (or mirror), the more light the telescope can gather to form brighter images. 

Also, the surface of the lens (or mirror) has to be extremely smooth. Any flaws in the objective lens/ mirror will change the image.

Magnification

A telescope’s magnification is how much it enlarges a target object. It’s the size of an object observed through a scope’s eyepiece relative to the object’s size when observed with the naked eye.

Distant celestial bodies are very small and dim in the night sky. So, photographing these objects require a powerful telescope that effectively magnifies them.

Comatic aberration

Comatic aberration (or coma) is an aberration in optical systems due to imperfection in the lens or other components of the system.

Being an aberration, comatic aberration causes light to spread out over a region instead of being focused on a single point. This results in off-axis point sources such as stars appearing to have a tail like a comet.

Different schemes to reduce comatic aberration include optical designs like Schmidt Cassegrain telescopes and Maksutov Cassegrains.

Coma is a big issue with reflectors, especially on fast scopes with a short focal ratio (from f/5 down). The faster the scope is, the smaller the “coma-free” area is in the field of view. So with the slower scopes (like f/6 and up), the coma is not a big issue.

Coma correctors have been designed to reduce the problem in Newtonian reflector telescopes. A coma corrector lens is not necessary for visual observations but is a must-have accessory for astrophotography with a fast-reflecting telescope.

The Explore Scientific HR Variable Coma Corrector is a high-performance optical corrector that helps eliminate image aberration caused by this off-axis optical phenomenon, even in fast Newtonians. You can use the 2-inch corrector lens on almost any Newtonian telescope with a parabolic primary mirror.

Features of the best telescope for astrophotography

The things to consider when choosing the best telescope for astrophotography are:

Aperture

The aperture is the diameter of the primary lens or mirror of the telescope. The aperture determines a telescope’s resolving power because the bigger the aperture, the more light the telescope can gather to create sharper images. 

The best astrophotography telescopes have large apertures to gather more light from the target objects and produce clearer and more detailed images. Most astrophotography telescopes have apertures of 100mm and above.

Focal length

The focal length is the distance from the telescope’s main lens or mirror to where the light is focused. The focal length determines a telescope’s magnification because a longer focal length gives a higher magnification. 

Since celestial objects are small, you need a long focal length scope to take detailed shots of celestial bodies. Telescopes with 450mm – 1500mm focal lengths work well depending on whether you are interested in deep sky astrophotography or lunar and planetary astrophotography.

Focal ratio

The focal ratio is the relationship between a telescope’s aperture and focal length. Expressed as “f/number,” the focal ratio is the focal length divided by the aperture.

The focal ratio gives the speed of an optical system. A lower f/number indicates a faster telescope and vice versa. Faster scopes are suited for lunar and planetary astrophotography.

Optical quality

The best telescopes for astrophotography should give crisp, high-quality images. Optical quality describes how clear and sharp a telescope’s images are. 

Optical quality is affected by many factors, including the telescope’s design, the quality of lenses or mirrors, etc. 

Prime focus astrophotography vs. digiscoping

In digiscoping, you place the lens of a camera to the eyepiece of a spotting scope to take your pictures. But in prime focus astrophotography, you remove the telescope’s eyepiece and attach the camera directly to the eyepiece holder, making the scope a giant telephoto camera lens. 

Let’s start with digiscoping so we can better understand what the prime focus is. You can do digiscoping with any optical instrument (like binoculars, spotting scopes, or refracting telescopes and reflecting telescopes.

When digiscoping, you place the lens of a digital camera on the eyepiece of a spotting scope to take pictures. First, you focus the image in your optical instrument. Then, you attach the camera or mobile phone to your eyepiece with a simple adapter.

There is no issue with the focus on digiscoping. But that is not how astrophotography is done.

Prime focus astrophotography means photographing sky objects using a camera directly coupled to a telescope. That is, the camera takes the place of the scope’s eyepiece.

In astrophotography, you remove your telescope’s eyepiece and attach a modified DLSR camera into the eyepiece holder. Then you move the focuser until the camera sensor reaches the prime focus point in the focuser and the image is clear.

Prime focus astrophotography is the preferred way to take pictures of dim deep-sky objects, which are the most popular targets for astrophotographers. 

The big advantage of prime focus astrophotography is that the magnifications are relatively low, so image brightness is high, and exposure time can be minimized. 

Which type of telescope is better for astrophotography: refracting or reflecting?

Both refracting and reflecting telescopes can be used for astrophotography, but reflecting telescopes tend to be better for capturing images of brighter celestial objects, while refracting telescopes excel at deep space astrophotography. 

Most people prefer refracting telescopes for astrophotography. This is because reflectors have their prime focus deeper in the focuser, making it difficult to focus the image with the camera. 

However, there are reflectors built specifically for astrophotography. These have a special focal ratio that gets the focus point up the tube, making focusing easier.

Prime focus is preferred for astrophotography. However, after coupling a camera with a telescope (so that the camera takes the place of the scope’s eyepiece), getting the camera sensor to reach the prime focus point in the focuser is impossible with many scopes.

You can’t do that on every telescope. There is almost no problem with refractors and Cassegrain. Their focusers are at the back of the tube and have a long range, so you can easily reach the prime focus with the camera sensor.

But reflectors have their focusers on the front side of the tube and can’t do long-range movements because they will start blocking a lot of light entering the tube. That’s why the prime focus is deeper in the focuser, and it is difficult to focus the image with your camera.

It is very common for people to buy Newtonian reflectors and add a camera, and then they can’t reach the focus. For this reason, many people are using refractors for astrophotography.

However, this doesn’t mean that reflectors cannot be used for astrophotography. There are some hacks for using Newtonian reflectors for astrophotography. Also, there are specialized reflecting telescopes that can be used for astrophotography.

You may like: Reflector vs Refractor Telescope: Which one do you need?

Specialized astrophotography reflecting telescopes

Specialized astrophotography reflectors have a special focal ratio, compared to regular reflectors, to get the focus point up from the tube. This solves the issue of reaching the prime focus with the camera.

Though these scopes are made explicitly for astrophotography, you can also use them for visual observation of the night sky.

The best part is that reflectors made for astrophotography are much cheaper than their refractor equivalents, so they should be the first choice for a beginner. 

And not only beginners but many experienced astrophotographers are now exploring the possibilities with big reflectors. Big aperture refractors are simply too expensive and too heavy.

The advantage of the big aperture in astrophotography is that you can do shorter exposures with the same result as longer exposure with a small aperture. 

And the smaller exposure also means that you don’t need a very expensive high-end mount with auto-guiding.

Takeaway – Enjoy the most rewarding kind of photography with astrophotography telescopes

Astrophotography is one of the most rewarding kinds of photography. While observing celestial objects is exciting, photographing these objects and sharing the captivating images is even more exciting.

Enjoying the rich rewards of photographing sky objects starts with getting an astrophotography telescope. These 15 astrophotography telescopes mentioned above will serve you well. 

Do you want to photograph the moon, planets, galaxies, or nebulae? Whatever your astrophotography interest, you’ll find the perfect telescope in the list above.

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