Arran townsend

Thats very interesting, thankyou for sharing. I will have to take precautions to prevent dew from damaging my camera. I may use conformal coating on the cameras electronics aswell as a 3dprinted casing to extend the gap between the sensor and the screen (to house the peltier and fan) this will be ventilated ofcourse. Im also considering using mini fans to keep a constant airflow over the electronics to prevent dew from forming

Hi all, I'm working on a new diy-based astrophotography setup as I want to get back into this hobby. I have recently purchased a Canon 450d which its soul purpose is for staring at the night sky. I want to make modifications to it such as filter removal, mirror motor bypass to prevent the minute vibrations it causes. And more importantly to fit peltier cooling directly onto the back of the sensor. For inspiration ive been looking at cameras such as the ASI294MC PRO, which has a small form factor and is able to achieve -30°C on an average night. What I want to know is what type of peltier cooling chip does it have inside? I'm aware it is a 2 stage peltier cooler but I want to know if there are any other engineering trickery used to achieve such low temperatures with a very small fan cooling the hot side. If anyone has taken apart a camera similar to this... I would like to know what the setup inside the camera looked like. Thanks, Arran

Which do you think I should get, a light pollution filter or a genuine polar scope?

Hi, I agree with the fact about countering star trails, those 15 second shots were not very good due to poor judgment with polar alignment, I have fashioned together a polar scope using an old finderscope I had, using a calculator and some wire to make a polar scope, when I tested this I had good star tracking at 300seconds which dropped my jaw!

Hi Vlaiv, judging from my unfiltered photos, do you think that using a light pollution filter would benifit me?, I live in a bortal 7 area, but I can't see any light pollution in my images, perhaps I don't know what it looks like...

It is a arduino driven barn door tracker

What do you think the probability of it being this satellite?

Your RIGHT!!, looking in stellarium at the exact time the photo was taken shows satellite GlobalStar M006, it matches the area perfectly, a reflection off of the sun is what happened. Well done to you!

A meteor could explain it, if this strange appearance was a meteor coming perfectly toward the lens, I'll feel pretty proud that I've captured perhaps a 1 in a few million event, but meteors usually would break up into small parts at it's peak burn in the atmosphere and this is not shown in the image, or the image after, unless it burned up and dissipated in the 5 second gap between exposures. Plenty of food for thought!

Very interesting point, I didn't think of that

Yeah we should :), i was thinking it might be a variable star of some sort

I thought the same about the reflection, but the star underneath the bright star on the right is not reflected under the star on the left, very strange...

Hi all, I have recently been out trying to take some images with my barn door tracker I have built, a few nights ago I thought I'll try and photo C34 Veil nebula, and while going through all of my frames I noticed somthing which I can not explain 1 of my images shows a bright star randomly appearing, I'll post the image below along with the image before and the image after, I imideantly ruled out a satellite and I thought it could be an optical reflection of some sorts, Image details: Exposure: 15 seconds ISO: 3200 Sensor temperature 24°C 300mm lens aperture around f/7 IMG_6891.CR2 IMG_6890.CR2 IMG_6892.CR2

Do you know if light pollution filters fix small star deformities, I ask because I have a canon 75-300mm iii lens and using a bahtinov mask to focus, zooming all the way into my photos shows stars that almost look like an arch. Not to different the image below, I think it could be chromatic abberation, I'm unsure how to get around this or if it will affect my images.

Ok, I'll bare that in mind for the future, for now I'm not going to modify my 1200d

Did you use a telescope or a lens for these images?

What telescope/lens did you use for this image?

I was thinking that using my unmodified dslr won't be that good, because most online images I find are shot with an 'modified' DSLR. But seeing images of unmodified DSLR'S they look pretty good anyway.

I've been thinking of getting a filter that battles with the led lighting, but I think they are a bit pricey to start with. Here is a single test exposure to show the skies I'm dealing with, it looks like it's mostly sodium I'm dealing with, see what you think...

I'm not going to modify the camera as I use it for daytime use aswell, do you think my unmodified dslr and the CLS filter will be a good enough setup for most deep sky objects such as galaxy's and nebulae?

Hi all, im in a decisive battle at the moment, I have a canon 1200d unmodified dslr which I have been using for my short experience at astrophotography, I want to go 1 step further and get a light pollution filter to filter out my blinding bortal 7-8 night skies. I have been researching the Astronomik CLS clip filter, but I have also come across the CCD version of that which is best for modified dslr's. What I'm thinking is, is getting the standard CLS filter worth it?, because my DSLR is unmodified and I don't want to get a filter for my camera to find my DSLR is not capable at basic astrophotography. Thoughts?? Thanks, Arran