The Worst Astrophotography Advice I've Ever Seen 

Don't knock playing doom on a pregnancy test until you've tried it! 😆

My heart sinks whenever a friend suddenly says "I got a telescope!" because you just know they got burned so bad.

Yeah, I've read several articles on that site. They always leaves me shaking my head

My 1980's 60mm Bushnell Skychief II has led to a 16" Newtonian, 8" RC, 5" FSQ 16" SCT and two built observatories. One personal, one professional. I gave up trying to explain to my friends whats good anymore. Especially after they look through the above mentioned.

Great video! It’s almost a rule that a beginner should avoid any internet list of what purports to be the Ten Best of Anything, with all the products having affiliate links. As you say, the Lists aren’t there to serve the reader by providing expert advice, but to make money from the gullible reader who clicks on the buying links. Another shameful example of shoddy journalism sacrificing truth for clicks. Thanks for making the video.

Dude....I think u nailed it at the beginning...that list is a ChatGPT written article gone WAY wrong....just grabbing random keywords that make no sense together. And what do you MEAN F10 is not super fast?!?! 🤣 I mean, the number is getting bigger, it must be faster.....

Just goes to show that if you pay Google, they’ll put your site at the top of the search, regardless of whether the ads are plagued by horse 💩. Really ticks me off.

Good points here yo I was tired of all the BS online so I drove all the way to Starizona and talked to the professionals who’ve been doing this for a living. Told them I’m completely new, I came in with a sh** ton of questions, and walked away more knowledgeable with an informed decision on what to buy as my first set up.

I'm glad I spent weeks researching and learning about telescopes and didn't just go off one of these stupid top 10 lists. I originally started watching a youtube video of the top 5 telescope of 2024 and the very first comment basically said "Do not buy these telescopes, they are junk, and you will regret it. Get information from reputable people who are passionate about astronomy." and then proceeded to refer a video by Ed Ting and then down the rabbit hole I went. I went from Ed Ting, to AVT-Astro, to Bogdan Damian, to this channel, and a few more that I can't remember. I spent days and days just watching video after video, reading forum after forum learning everything from telescope types, mounts, focal lengths and ratios, eyepieces, etc and none of the telescopes in the top5 telescopes in that original video were ever mentioned.

Good video man, we need more of this! I'm actually dying laughing over here because RU-vid's auto generated caption for the chapter on the Mak-Cass calls it a Maxitoff Casa Green 🤣

Thanks for taking the time to share this information. Maybe you can add to it. Like join an astronomy group either in person or on line to get first hand information before spending money.

I think my overall favorite quote was the one about "Basic Astrophotography....". Which means what ? Maybe just gaffer taping a camera to the scope and hoping for the best. These articles are crazy. Good video to put out, hopefully some beginners see this before they see that number 1 search result.

I am your 1000th subscriber :D I couldn't resist when I noticed that you have 999 subs :D Great video BTW. That article is pure cringe. I remember my days when I started this hobby and I am happy that I did some research before buying my first telescope for astrophotography.

nice one! I was in this situation a few months back and didnt actually know what to buy. After a few hits and misses, finally I have a decent setup. I wish I has seen this video before.

I went camping with the astronomy club I belong, and someone was using the Unistellar and started yelling "look at this; 10 objects, 10 photos in 1 hour. What you got?" And I said "a very decent photo of Andromeda, and I'm planing on taking at least 2 more hours of it, then my calibration frames. He was like "what?" See, the problem with these telescopes is that they mislead people to think astrophotography is as easy as taking a photo of your cat. It doesn't work like that.

OOOOOH snap who got my boy Ian upset........ First off loved the video and sarcasm was on point , but was hoping to hear a rap at the end 🙂 any how I love your passion for what you do dont change keep it moving 🫶🙂👌✌🏻

This article hurt to read. I hope the authors see this video and realise their mistake 😩

Well done. Some great tips. I would take one exception to what your saying. I've been imaging deep space for a few years now. One of my telescopes is the celestron sct 8". One of the great things about this scope is that I use it as two scopes in one. With a hyperstar I have a large field of view at 396mm focal length. With an OAG I have 1600mm plus focal length. It can be hard to keep in collimation. So you need to know what your doing. But with the diversity it has it is well worth it.

Distracted by your Redcat 51 in the background. I love this small telescope.

Great info! So what’s your Top 10 recommended astrophotography scopes?

A big problem in this hobby (and life) is that when you are starting it is very hard to discern good from bad information. Add to this that the word Astrophotography is used for anything between Landscape / Milky way, Moon, Planets, DSOs (that by themselves can have very different equipment requirement), Solar, etc... The bad thing is that you (i.e. me) end up buying an F/5 Newtonian with manual EQ mount and thinking that: "I will just add an RA motor someday when I need to" But then of course nothing works. Wait but it has a solar filter, so I can do solar if I want to, right (wrong) I hope this will help other newbies save some money. Sad thing is that probably ChatGPT will give them better info than this, just with the disclaimer that it might be totally wrong

That was hilarious. I am doing the research, and watching the online classifieds. I wish I had the spare $600 lying around to buy the 8SE I saw put up for sale this week. It has the big Celestron eyepiece and filter kit included. It is the typical used twice and put away scope. The old Meade 10" LX6 that came up for sale for $300 looks super tempting, but that might be too much glass for my current situation. My current scope is an older Nexstar 80GT my father-in-law gave us that I am trying to get the mount working. It is a handset issue. At least I can manually move it around. It was an awe inspiring experience to see the moon up close with all the craters. I am really looking forward to seeing Saturn. I will stick with visual for now. Astrophotography, might be down the road if we move someplace with a lower Bortle number.

The interesting thing would be to know what are the best 5 telescopes for astrophotography in 2023. I suppose such a title needs further qualification, such as budget considerations, or intended target, or for beginners, etc. Ironically I bought the Celestron 130 as my first scope, probably at the start for observation, but natural progression meant I use it to do moon and planetry astrophotography with a webcam type eyepiece and a dslr on a barlow to get focus. I subsequently moved onto a celestron 102SLT with its alt az mount, but probably more importantly the goto capability. In this particular case you wouldnt include it in the best astrophotography bracket because its not equatorial, but the ability to point at objects you cant necessarily see but can after 10 to 30s worth of exposure because of the sideral stepping has manged to keep me interested in astrophotography for the last 10 years. In fact I just bought a evostar 72ED to trial on the 102 mount hoping its better optics means I can revist the objects I have already done. The irony I seem to be finding now having watched a few other utube videos is that there is a whole new area of astrophotography just using a tripod and dslr with a decent lens and stacked short exposures.

I saw this article and was expecting something like the redcat 51 for beginner astrophotography and when I saw the recommendations I was like wtf… eyepieces? f11? Can’t believe this article exists. Your video should be at the top of google

The absolute best rig is a cheap monocular from Wal-mart and a cell phone.

I am a beginner myself. Bought a Svbony sv503 70ED based on youtubers recommendation for beginners. The price was good and it got the job done. I know Rasa 8 can do much better job but for now I could only afford much cheaper scope as I not super serious with astrophotography just yet-I just enjoy all genres of photography 😊

I agree with you mostly (I have an EQ6R-Pro with a decent OTA). Re the Sky Traveler… The EQ3 is an equatorial mount which might be adequate. The picture is of a StarTravel 120 AZ3. So, their picture dies not match up with their scope. In fact, SkyWatcher doesn’t even mention and StarTravel 120 EQ3-2. Oh, well.

I put my son's old DSLR he gave me on my f5 C6-N with refigured mirror to near perfect focus. I had a Celestron Digital Camera Adapter that lines the camera up with the eyepiece and the camera fit it. I have a manual CG-4 mount so I take 1 to 3 second exposures depending on the magnification. I'm not into astrophotography and I'm good. Take some decent pictures and stack them, but I'm not going to spend hours trying to learn Photoshop either. Just some pictures for family on Facebook to try and get some of them interested in astronomy.

Lol the little dob made me laugh. these aren't bad scopes but the whole point of astrophotography is for the telescope to be on a tracking eq mount. I got myself a avx mount along with a svbony sv48p and a canon t5i.

think you need to look at it another way...not everyone wants to carry heavy kit to set up..spend hours collecting and editing data,its a steep learning curve...ive tired using skywatchers etc..ok results... i have the equinox , its quick, it does produces good images and some editing..im happy with it and my results look good enough to even put on canvas....i also now have the dwarf 2 ..for the size factor and what it can do is pretty amazing... even the video quality is 4k,with binning off > the still images of wild life are great.. the tracking, plate solving are spot on for such a tiny unit..

It shows as the #1 result for me, below three ads. Hopefully that changes (for everyone).

I probably was one of those ngl, i bought 3 months a go a set on Bresser, i got the ar-102xs with a sort of mix between eq3/4, and ngl, i enjoyed what ive done with It because im completely a beginner but since i got deeper and deeper in this hobby i just discovered that i wasted my money, in fact not only the things that came with it were already like, used or had some sort of signs on them, but i had to send my focuser back because it had tilting and when they gave me it back it was fixed yea, but had scratches and paint removed but not like that they forgot to put it on, it was like drilled out, i told them and they didnt answer anymore, plus i even had play with the slow motion controls, still i luckly sold it and got back all the money i spent for it, now i got a 6" RC on an ioptron gem28 and it goes fire

I own and use a Celestron NexStar 6SE and do a lot of astrophotography with it - and I love it! I took pictures of real deepsky-objects, especially all the common galaxies (Andromeda of course, although only the core fits in, whirlpool, just recently M81 and M82 etc.). But it's an Alt-Az-mount which limits exposures to 10-12 seconds, so you need excellent seeing-conditions and stack many many pictures, you need accessories to mount the camera to it, but still: It didn't discourage me at all! Okokokok, I did move to an eq-mount now ... but just saying ... thanks for the video anyway and I agree on your "pass" for the automated ones. Greetings from Switzerland in the middle of Europe.

Great video 🔥

With a spherical mirror the Astromaster 130 isn't great for visual either.

Awesome video, funny and important to share. Magazines are places people trust for advice this is very disappointing what they have written. :(

I do get a laugh sometimes when I see these sites. I’m fairly new to dso astro. My first scope/mount was the power seeker , lasted about 3 short nights and back to Amazon. I flat out just gave up trying to man handle this newt and mount. I know it’s not a cheap hobby but penny pincher me lol I learned my lesson.

I have a TS Photon 150mm reflector and a Skymax 127. As you say, this is a terrible list of recommendations for beginners to astrophotography and I thank you for calling it out. That Celestron Powerseeker is horrible to use and would put anybody off astrophotography. Subscribed because I agree with you.

Lol, that's funny but also sad for people who actually bought from these sites as they don't know better as beginners. It does happen and it sucks. Thanks for sharing this video as it will help others!

Bought the Celestron Astomaster 130 Eq, and found the equatorial mount unusable, was planning to use it on the deck to look at planets and the moon, which it does a good job at, and it was 240$ Canadian. No intentions to use it for Astrophotography.

I Dont Know Whether To Laugh Or Cry,I Started With The 114LCM And A Neximage 10 About 6 Years Ago😂Santa’s Doings,Following Year,6se,Mak90 For Grab and Go,ES102/1000😂😂😂1st Refractor,The Evoguide50ed,The Evostar72ed,The Eqm35Pro,Canon T3i,Zwo120Mini,385MC,A Bortle 4 Sky,and Ive Seen It Twice Since Christmas,Great Video,and Yes..Some Cringing Going On..Im Excited About Learning Guiding And Upping My Game,and Still Have Set Ups To Play With While Imaging,God Bless and Clear Skies🙏🏼❤️🔭✨🌏

The article was written by a bot and I'd be willing to bet the bad scopes have commission links. It is less of a problem that this crap exists than that Google has it as a top result. Same thing with some "Amazon's Best" recommendations.

I appreciate your effort in doing this video. However, it would be helpful for telescope novices if you would provide more specifics on why a certain telescope is bad for astrophotography.

Great video, but this isn't just astrophotography gear. There's many of the same kind of "articles" on various consumer products like computer monitors, motherboards, laptops, networking gear, ... that you will notice are equally bad if you have some expert knowledge in the field. Ultimately these people posting the articles (cause I'm not sure they are actually writing them) are basically scammers but they are enabled by Amazon (it's ALL about the affiliate links) and Google (who's been asleep at the wheel in the fight on linkspam and their search results have gotten worse and worse as time progresses).

Dude if Google is wrong than can you suggest me best telescope around 300 usd around the price of celestron Astromaster 130 EQ , before watching your video I am going to buy Astromaster 130 EQ

You don't need telescope for hundreds of thousands bucks to take a photo, cheap camera with cheap lens can do it, so yeah, you can take a photo with those telescopes, you just expecting to much.

The only thing missing from this list is some J.D. Power awards

I see this kind of thing all the time. As you say they have no clue what they are talking about and they just cut and paste. They prob spent a whole hour to produce that article.

Love the rant! We should do a crossover.

WHaaaaaat???? Google is wrong???? No way. I've never seen that happen before. When I do a google search I expect 100% legit search results! Dude, it's an advertisement disguised as a review. They are ALL OVER the internet!

the "right information" is in short supply these days, not just for buddying astrophotographers. the powers that should not be are throwing us all under the buss😮

You should have ended the video with your top 10 recommend list 👍

2:30 most AP youtubers and community members would have you instantly shell out 2k for a hobby you dont know if you are into yet.

As a certified Celestron 127 EQ Powerseeker owner, don't buy a powerseeker. Please.

Why do astrophotography when you can just import the sloan sky surveys and hsc surveys into stellarium. No fun in making photos after

Sounds dishonest, assuming the people writing these articles know that they are lying.

What do you want to bet this is some AI generated article? 🤔

Funny that its even harder to take images with these weak ass mounts😂

is funny how from all "THE BEST" telescopes ,noone of them had EQ GoTo mount :D Just shows how bad whoever do this review is and even tho C5 and Mak180 are amazing scopes they are not cheap and to get GoTo EQ mount (good one) we talk about paying same amount u paid for the OTAs alone and for people who have DSLR and few good lenses , just get a tripod and aim it at the sky , check how is the max exposure u can get without star trailing do 50-100 photos , stack them in DSS or SiriL , tweak the data in SiriL or Photoshop / GIMP and enjoy what u have done without the telescope , u will be surprised how much happy u can get from something so little and say to yourself "WOW i made this"

🌺 Promo`SM

Where are the REAL fact checkers… right here!

This is just an advert, not advice....

The first 2 minutes is wasted on you repeating yourself over and over. Your video could have been more powerful by actually putting up your Astrophotography choices for 2023. Since you don't, it makes your whole video rather pointless, and you sound elitist and rather pompous. You just can't slam an article and then not offer better choices. The title for this video should be The Worst Critique of The Worst Astrophotography Advice I've Ever Seen. You can do better.

Hi Ian, Can you help me to review GSO 8 inch RC and GSO 8 inch Classical cassegrain telescope. Also please let me know which type is overall good for planetary and DSO watching. Also can't we increase the FOV with a flatner