amumin

Hi Guys, Total newb here, I've only been taking pics for a few months, but I'm starting to have some success. Using a 10" Meade LX200-ACF with the stock alt-az goto mount. Camera is a Canon T3i attached to a Moonlight focuser. Using Deep Sky Stacker for processing, haven't gotten the hang of taking bias's or flats yet, only using darks. I've been limited to 10-15sec exposures max due to the tracking errors in the mount...sometimes I can use 30sec exposures if I take a tonne of frames and cherry pick the best ones. Biggest revelation for me so far has been to buy a $30 intravolometer for the Canon which allowed me to start taking the quantity of shots needed quickly and easily. Below are some of my best shots to date: Great Orion Nebula. 4 frames @ 10 seconds exposure each, 3200 ISO, 4 dark frames. One of my early attempts and first successful final image. There is more noise with this shot than the others because I was trying to stack jpgs :s Rookie mistake I guess. With the next couple of shots I converted the jpgs to bmps before hand, which may be why they look a little pixilated. Next time out I'll just shoot RAW images and work with that. M13, 24 frames @ 15 seconds exposure each, 6400 ISO, 10 dark frames. Whirlpool Galaxy, 17 frames @ 30 second exposure each, 6400 ISO, 20 dark frames. Probably shot close to 100 frames that night, but had to discard the vast majority of them due to tracking errors and streaky stars. I'm a firm believer that you CAN do photography with an alt-azi mount! If not somewhat limited. Going to try and push my rig to the limits before I purchase a German equatorial mount. Anybody try using an autoguider with an alt-azi setup to try and remove some of the tracking errors? Is it worth it to try and get consistent 30 sec exposures? Thanks! Ahmad