Setup builder
Build your imaging setup
Pair a telescope, camera and mount and see the pixel scale, field of view and payload margin, calculated from manufacturer-published specifications.
Your setup
Images drawn to true angular scale. Deep sky: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2, acknowledgement Davide De Martin (CC BY 4.0), 179.4′ × 179.7′. Jupiter: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (GSFC). Sun: NASA/SDO and the AIA science team (304 Å).
How the figures are calculated
- Pixel scale (″/px) = 206.265 × pixel size (µm) ÷ focal length (mm). A reducer or extender multiplies the focal length.
- Field of view = 2 × arctan(sensor dimension ÷ (2 × focal length)).
- Image circle: the sensor diagonal is compared with the manufacturer’s published image circle.
- Mount load: published telescope and camera weights plus a generous accessory allowance (2 kg for telescopes up to 5 kg, 3.5 kg up to 12 kg, 5 kg above), compared with the manufacturer’s rated payload. Keeping the imaging load within roughly 50–70% of rated payload is a widely used guideline, not a manufacturer rating.
- Only manufacturer-published values saved on each product are used. Where a value is not published it is shown as “Not published” and never estimated.