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kerrylewis
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Blog Entries posted by kerrylewis
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Finally began to see something after some helpful advice from a couple of forum members. My error was not setting the white levels etc in relation to the histogram. It's all new to me - except in terms of ordinary photography, so I was in the dark - literally. I now have 'live' images which are essential for alignment and focussing. Conditions were not good, however, with an almost full moon, thin cloud and lots of dew. So I packed in knowing that I was at least on the right road and looking forward to next time.
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Sunday was a good day to continue the quest with clear skies nearly all day and into the evening. Tried some solar photos for the first time ever. Managed to cobble together various adapters to enable the DSLR to fit the small refractor which has a solar filter. Focus is difficult to perfect using the camera's screen so the results are nowhere near as sharp as the eyeball view but acceptable as a first attempt. With advice from SGL members it seems I need to try stacking etc. Also computer control of the camera would be an advantage but it looks like this will be a problem with the Olympus.
In the evening tried the lodestar and lodestar live for the first time. Mixed success- there are no real instructions for the software just various threads on SGL so it was all a but 'suck it and see' . It's clear that you don't really get a 'live' view but after various bits of trial and error I did get images of random star groups trying out various exposures. The very bright moon did not help and I may have to wait until conditions improve but it's still fun experimenting. I also need to align the scope properly so that I can find specific targets - hopefully! The quest continues......
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I thought that I would start a blog following my initial wanderings into astrophotography. I always thought that it would not interest me, but I also said that I didn't fancy a Dob!
So; I have two aims which I am moving towards;
1. Using a Lodestar camera with the Lodestar Live ap.
2. Using my Olympus dslr (E620) or perhaps even my old E300.
1.With the Lodestar in mind I have recently bought a Mac Powerbook, which is start because otherwise I only have a desktop machine. One aim is to control the mount from indoors and see images on the screen in comfort, perhaps even sketching from them. Is this cheating?
2. The aim here would be too use either existing lenses, or connect the camera(s) to various scopes. I am not sure that I would risk trying to mod the old one myself, and I want to keep the E620 for normal use, so for the moment I would be using them unmodded.
The story so far:
1. I have the Powerbook loaded up with some Planetarium apps and Eqmac for the remote guiding bit. I have tested out all possible combinations and some simply won't connect to my AZEQ6GT. But a promising combination seems to be Sky Safari 4 Pro plus Eqmac. For some reason Sky Safari won't connect to the mount directly even though this version now has Skywatcher in the menu. I have only tried the laptop guiding once under clear skies and did not crack the sync to ensure that objects are centred - that's next.
Yesterday I received the Lodestar camera which connects OK to the Macbook but there doesn't seem to be any way to test it out further except under clear skies - which are at a premium at the mo. Sunday looks like being the first opportunity to try it.
2. I've got an adapter for my scopes, and various lenses, but that's it so far. I was ready to fix the camera to the mount the other night and try M31 for starters but then cloud intervened.
Ongoing.....
Kerry
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