hold up.....you can see images like that with a consumer telescope? to get that type of quality image how much cash are we taking for the gear? is this like a 10 000 dollar and up telescope ( I have no idea on this stuff)
You can spend as little as $4K to get this, but it's difficult. Closer to $10K. Even at that price, the telescope is only semi-automated with a lot to learn about the capture and the post-processing.
My telescope is an 8" aperture EdgeHD Schmitt-Cassegrain from Celestron, about $6K with the accessories. The camera is another $1K. Then there are cables, focus masks and other accessories. This is just for the captures. I also have a set of 2" aperture eyepieces for viewing. These are in the $3K range. Better cameras can run up to $3K.
A typical capture involves:
1) assemble/attach the telescope to the mount and wait for darkness
2) power on the telescope and wait for it to sync with a GPS satellite and discover the alignment camera
3) start auto-alignment and wait for it to complete - it usually takes shots of 3 points in the sky - this is how it maps the sky into the mount computer
4) use the go-to to slew to the star Polaris
5) use SharpCap polar alignment software to capture the stars around Polaris using the capture camera
6) manually slew the mount so it's 90 degrees rotated on the right ascension axis - this is how the earth rotates on it's axis
7) note the polar mis-alignment error in SharpCap and adjust the wedge so that the error is very low
8 ) go-to a star close to the object you want to capture
9) insert the focusing mask on the front of the OTA (telescope optical tube assembly)
10) use the focus controls to bring the star into fine focus using the motorized focuser
11) remove the focusing mask and go-to the object you want to capture
12) find the object in the camera FOV (field of view) and center it
13) if it needs rotating, loosen the camera lock and rotate the camera until it's oriented properly
14) open the intensity histogram in SharpCap
15) adjust the exposure time and gain until the histogram shows the object is brighter than the background noise
16) start the guiding software and logically connect to the guide camera and the mount
17) start cycling the guide star view and pick a star to guide with
18) if the guiding control needs re-calibration, do that for the guide camera and mount
19) start guiding
20) start the capture and leave the telescope to do it's thing for 2-4 hours
And this is on a warm night. On a cold night, one must use dew shields and heaters to keep things from frosting up. Many of these shots were captured in November, December and January on cold nights. October is probably the best month for captures, but only certain objects are visible. Lots of Nebulas during that period.
The telescope will track any object in the sky, but the object will creep out of the FOV over a few hours, so it's necessary to use guiding software and a guiding camera to keep the telescope finely locked onto a star and thereby the object, when capturing.
Most of the objects I have shown you are not visible to the eye using this telescope, only the center part of Andromeda and part of Orion Nebula. In order to see the others at all, you must do long exposures with a camera. Colors are virtually non-existent to the naked eye, except for the planets and some colored stars. The camera is needed to resolve the colors as well. The moon is amazing through the right eyepiece BTW.