Most Basic Beginner Gear Compatibility Questions

General
1

I am VERY new (two months) to astrophotography and photography in general, but I’ve fallen in love with nebula, galaxy and Milky Way astro specifically because I’m in a Bortle 2 area, the core is in my backyard, and Cygnus is directly above. I’m learning I’m basically surrounded by DSO.

I have the most basic terminology understanding right now. Part of my questions may be covered elsewhere and I haven’t learned the proper terms yet.

I have the most basic gear: Canon EOS R50. Telescope is a Celestron Astrosomething-or-other 80mm/400mm/f5 with no tracker, and a tripod. I’ll be adding to my lack of gear rapidly, but I’m also looking for the right software that will be applicable now and as everything improves. From everything I’ve seen suggested SGPro is at the top.

SGPro questions:

  1. Will my camera (for now, I’ll be switching to a dedicated very soon) be compatible with the program? I don’t know why but it’s one mirrorless Canon that is not on a lot of compatibility lists.

I currently have a t-ring adapter and a usb/hdmi + hdmi/usbc to link my camera to my windows laptop (in theory with the R50).

  1. If compatible, is there an SGPro feature that turns my camera into a “guide scope” (I don’t know if that’s the right term) i.e. the program will show the objects my camera/telescope is aimed at helping me navigate the sky?

ready to not be laying upside down on the ground looking through the absolute worst scope, using a phone app to >sort of< star hop

I don’t know if that’s a basic feature in software like this, but if not:

  1. Is there a program that does do that to pair with my purchase of SGPro? (unsure if that’s a question allowed)

YouTube had an overwhelming amount of information so I thought going to the source community was the better option. I’m excited to keep learning and appreciate any question answered!

*also my apologies for any facepalms caused throughout this topic :sweat_smile:

2

Hello and welcome!

Looks like the EOS SDK version we’re using was JUST before the R50 was added. So we’ll need to update the EOS SDK. I’ll do that this evening and push out a new release in a couple of days.

You can do “Live view” through SGP. This will allow you to get a video stream of images from your camera into SGP and allow you to manually move your scope around. We also have plate solving routines which will allow your scope and mount to center automatically (depending on what type of mount you’re using). But that’s more of an advanced topic. Keep things simple for now.

You can also loop longer exposures so that you pickup more detail to make sure you’re pointed where you want to point.

SGP The First Week is a great place to get started: https://www.sequencegeneratorpro.com/download/testpackage/

We also have some getting started documentation in our help:
https://help.sequencegeneratorpro.com/OneShotColorOSCandDSLRCameras.html

Hope that helps!

Jared

3

Thank you! Your response was very helpful. I’ll go check out those links, and will watch for updates (so appreciated!)