neil groves

This [removed word] had me looking for 30 mins or more, I was looking too far down to the horizon, then when it got REALLY dark, I got a star map and found it way up in the sky just a faint glow to the naked eye ha ha 81 lights @ 15 secs = 20 mins 11 darks ISO 800 SW ED120 Canon T3

I went out to find M101 last night and was on the verge of giving up when as a last resort I pulled my 20mm plossel out and popped my 32mm Q70 Orion wide view in, I scanned for about a minute then a fuzzy patch of light appeared, so I centered it then attached my Canon T3 to the prime focus, and fired off 120 X 30 sec subs and 11 darks, this morning I processed this and looking at it thought......"that's not M101, it's the wrong shape" , I scanned star atlases and eventually found via Wikipedia that this is in fact M102, initially I was disappointed cuz I had failed in my mission to M101 and secondly I think this may be slightly out of focus, but I can clearly make out the dark dust lane running through the middle so will upload it anyway, it'll serve as a challenge to get a better one next time out lol. There are at least 2 other fuzzies there but just too faint to bother finding and labelling. 117 light subs = ~ 1Hr 11 dark subs Canon T3 ISO 800 skywatcher 120 ED

This was originally going to be 30 min exposure but after 12 mins this scene dipped behind my roof top and so it's only 12 mins, also I forgot to do my dark subs so a little noisier than what I would have liked, 30 sec lights through my ED120 onto a Canon T3....this is now on my bucket list for next year :-)

After a few hours of faffing around trying to squeeze as much detail out of this thing and trying to avoid centric rings I managed this, since I am a newbie to this game I am very satisfied although I am seeing I need to get to grops with my star spikes which were added in photoshop and I need to keep my noise levels down more but that is all a part of the astro learning curve. Lights = 58 Darks = 19 Flats = 19 ISO = 800 Scope = SW ED120 Camera = Canon 5D Processed in Deep Sky Stacker and Photoshop CS5.

58 x 30 sec subs = 30 mins 19 darks 20 flats My first attempt at a long exposure of a constellation, I actually had more fun processing this than I did collecting the star data lol I am new to this and so am learning loads along the way.....can you say addicted :-)

well i was out last night dodging the clouds trying for M13, as soon as i got outside and set up i noticed the moon setting in the west so i swung over and made this image, how can i control image size on the sensor?, this was made with my ED120 and a Canon 5D but since i don't have choice of eye piece when imaging as far as i can see my options are just switch to a crop sensor camera body or use a barlow in between the Camera and scope? Neil.

I went out to a reasonably dark site a while back, well it's dark overhead lol and did a 4 min exposure of the plough rising out of the LP in the east This consisted of 12 X20 sec lights 5 darks and 5 lights 25mm from the Canon 17-40L @ f/4 processed in DSS and photoshop.

Reprocessed this one with a different technique but it does appear my flats aren't working for some reason best I could do while still keeping the background dark. star colours are as out of camera but I did add the star spikes in photoshop (I like star spikes) :-) Canon 5D Canon 70-200L@200 lights: 10X3.2 secs = 32 secs total darks: 5 flats: 15

Orion at 70mm.....68 light subs processed in DSS, then streched in photoshop.

M45 {pleiades) 21 light subs at 3 secs each Canon 5D Canon 70-200L@200 f/5

21 light subs @ 3sec each. Belt of Orion with M42 clearly shown. Canon 5D Canon 70-200L@200 f/5

I did this image of Cassiopeia as I wanted some files to play with to get used to DSS, i'm both pleased with the result and disappointed, pleased because I snagged an aweful lot of stars and they are round pin points instead of blobs lol disappointed because I know that the milky way runs across this patch of sky and I have seen beautiful images full of colour, I failed to get any of the milkyway to show up even after stretching, and any colours I managed to capture in the stars are very subdued, this is only my second attempt with DSS though and i'm sure there is a learning curve to navigate. I'm sure the short exposure has a lot to do with my results though and much time will be spent experimenting ;-) Camera - Canon 5D Lens - Canon 70-200L @ 100mm f5.0 Exposure - Lights 20 X 5 secs Darks 10 X 5 secs Static tripod.