LDUNN1

.......I'm now also wondering what you have hanging out of the front of your trousers ;-)

........may sound stupid, but in replying to your post, it is the first time I really looked at this piccy properly - there really were loads of stars up there last night weren't there!!

;-0 .......I didn't think we were going to mention that.......

.......wish my post process skills were better to bring out the hub more....

thx Rob........got to sort out the less than stellar stars.....

I was amazed however at the colour that came with this single shot - I don't think I have played much with the colour post process other than to play with curves & levels a little.

Thx Martyn - yes it was an amazingly surprising night - I still can't believe it turned out as brilliant as it was!

Focal length is approx 1350mm & the camera is a full frame sensor (same as 35mm film negative - 24mm x 36mm) 21mp & the image shown has not been cropped - just resized down to fit in the 1200 pixel SGL limit. I was having some setup/guiding issues & I think/hoping that this is the cause of the mis-shaped stars......but it is early days & I have loads of things to follow up on.

.........those cloudy nights really ruin a nice clear star field shot ;-)

What camera / 'scope?????

I think you have done a great job on that one. I can't get close to that with my dslr + lens!

........no, this was not the subs from that fantastic night at TH - I took the subs you see here on the 24th May from Intech, nr Winchester - a few days before that SN was spotted! These subs were taken through my old Olympus 600mm f6.5 camera lens (on a Canon 5dmk2 with a suitable OM-EOS adapter).

That night at TH I was imaging the same subject but with a different lens combination - I did some daylight back-to-back tests with various kit & discovered that my Canon 70-200L f2.8 IS mk2 plus 2x mk2 & 1.4x mk2 converters gave significantly better results than any of my other kit - with those converters the lens effectively becomes a 560mm f8 - a tad slow for imaging being the downside, just means I have to take more subs ;-)

I've stacked the subs from the TH night, & the stack looks superior to the subs I took on the 24th May with the Olympus lens - with the canon I'm getting much better shaped stars with little violet haloing - I was getting a lot with the Olympus.

Sadly, I have not had time to fully post process the TH stack yet.

......just out of curiosity, I decided to stack all my M51 subs captured from both lens setups - not expecting it to be that great due to the differences, but it looks the best stack to work on surprisingly enough......just goes to show, you almost can't have too much exposure in AP ;-)

When I get time to post process the TH subs, I will post the result to act as a comparison.

.......I'm still amazed what you can do with just a DSLR & camera lens & an astro mount.......& alot of patience!

thanks for the comments

.........& I can't wait to get a decent scope to image with ;-)

.........will be out trying my luck with a Canon 70-200 + converters tonight - daylight back-2-back tests have shown it significantly better than the OM 600mm I've been using......wonder if it will hold the same for night time.

Cheers.....I should add that it was taken with a Canon 5Dmk2 & an old Olympus manual focus 600mm f6.5 camera lens with Eos-OM adapter. This camera & lens sitting on an EQ6 which was under the control of a laptop running Carte Du Ciel & PHD autoguiding with an ST80 + QHY5. ie the optical imaging side did not involve any 'astro' gear as such......I only started in March 2011, so my post processing takes a lot to be desired too.....