carastro

Working Ok for me too.

We were all there at one time.  Hope it goes well for you.  

Carole 

The first thing is to make sure your polar scope is orthogonal, you can do this by tipping one leg of the mount and pointing the polarscope at an aerial or something, then rotate your RA Axis to make sure the Aerial stays central, if it doesn't you will nbeed to adjust the little grub screws on the polarscope.  Incidentllay you'll need to rotate the Dec axis 90 degrees in order to see thgrough the polarscope.  (Pretty sure I have the right axes here, it's been a while since I have done it as I now use Polemaster.

NO POLAR ALIGNMENT IS NOT ON ANY DISTANT OBJECT.  It needs to be done on the pole star (Polaris), because the sky rotates around it.  

You need to know where polaris is at any given time as it too rotates around the pole 1 degree away, so you need to get that accurate.

My website explains how to do it (scroll to item 6)

https://sites.google.com/view/astrophotography-carole-pope/how-to-image-with-a-dslr?authuser=0

Hopefully you also have a manual, though my experience is they are often basic and assume prior knowledge.

Hope this helps

Carole 

That's excellent for a handheld image. 

3 hours ago, icefabio said:

No, I don't know Lorenzo but maybe I will have one more friend.

Lorenzo sometimes goes off the dark locations, so definitely worth chatting to him.  

Welcome.  
There is another member on here from Rome.  Lorenzo Massimi perhaps you know him. 
 

He was based in ENGLAND for 3 years but is now back in Rome.  Also an imager.  We did some astro camping together while he was here for darker skies.  

He is also on Astrobin  

Carole

Yup, l am a member if Orpington AS a very active and friendly group.  
 

HaHa just saw it was Duncan who posted before me.  Hi Duncan.  
just to add we have monthly observing sessions in Otford and occasional Deep Sky camps in East Sussex. 
 

Carole

Excellent, a difficult target at the best of times.

Looking good Graeme.  Presume you are planning some sort of roll off roof and that it is going towards the palm tree.  

Carole   

What flaws? 

Excellent result. 

Welcome

I image both in an observatory at home and also at astro camps.  
 

At camp l leave everything set up and simply put the lens cap back on and a cover over everything while l am there.    I rarely clean my optics, flats do a perfectly good job.    So as long as you don’t move your camera or focus, flats can be reused.  
 

Additionally I also have a camera fitted in the back of my Samyang lens for wide field imaging with filterwheel all permanently fitted together in mounting rings.  I never open up the set up and am still using flats from 18 months ago. 
 

Carole

I haven't seen anything like this.  It doesn't look typical for lack of flat frames.  I hope you resolve the problem and would be interested to know what caused it.

Carole 

I have seen the aurora in both Norfolk and Iceland and neither time did I see colour to my naked eye, just appeared white.  Yes with a camera they appeared green.

Hope this answers your question.

Carole 

Astro phoptography is a two part job.

a) the capture

b) the post processing.

they both take a lot of learning but very rewarding when it all comes together and you see the results of your hard work.

There are some people who simply buy already captured data and process it.   

Carole 

Thanks Martin.  Yes I must confess there have been other occasions when I have tried to image it from the same site and much depends on that low area being clear of cloud and murk.  

Carole 

All images need processing afterwards.   Deep sky because they are hidden in the darkness and need bringing out.  
 

You might get away with it on the Moon.
 

Carole 

The top asterism is Ursa Major (The Plough).  The two [pairs of dots are the feet of the Great Bear.  

Thanks Olly for your nice comments, and thanks everyone else.

Carole 

Minehead is not a whole lot higher in latitude to my campsite.   Minehead is 51.2 degrees and my campsite is 51.02 degrees.  Might be worth a shot. 

Carole 

Taken over several years.  Twice in Spain and twice in East Sussex.

Spain 2017 DSLR and cheap camera lens and Ioptron skytracker. 4 hours
Spain 2019 same set up but with a luminance filter and Mono CCD camera 2 hours 
I wasn't happy with either as the cheap camera lens produced horrible stars.

Having bought a Samyang 135mm lens at the end of 2019, I decided to try to get better luminance from the campsite I visit from time to time in East Sussex, but it is VERY low from the UK.  This time I could take my full rig with me and do longer guided subs.  HEQ5, Atik460EX and Samyang 135mm lens. 

2022 I captured some luminance with better stars of the Antares region, but half of Rho Ophiucci was chopped off.  1 hour 20mins
https://www.astrobin.com/sz1393/B/
last week April 2023 I captured the area around Rho Ophiucci and made a mosaic thus completing the image at last.  1 1/2 hours.  Of course we can always use more data but given my VERY limited opportunities I think this will be the final version.

Total of 8h 50mins

Slightly revised version posted on 29th April, with some star reduction.  Hope this is an improvement.  

I also managed to complete an image I have been bashing away at over several year as follows:

Taken over several years.  Twice in Spain and twice in East Sussex.

Spain 2017 DSLR and cheap camera lens and Ioptron skytracker. 4 hours
Spain 2019 same set up but with a luminance filter and Mono CCD camera 2 hours 
I wasn't happy with either as the cheap camera lens produced horrible stars.

Having bought a Samyang 135mm lens at the end of 2019, I decided to try to get better luminance from the campsite I visit from time to time in East Sussex, but it is VERY low from the UK.  This time I could take my full rig with me and do longer guided subs.  HEQ5, Atik460EX and Samyang 135mm lens. 

2022 I captured some luminance with better stars of the Antares region, but half of Rho Ophiucci was chopped off.  1 hour 20mins
https://www.astrobin.com/sz1393/B/
last week April 2023 I captured the area around Rho Ophiucci and made a mosaic thus completing the image at last.  1 1/2 hours.  Of course we can always use more data but given my VERY limited opportunities I think this will be the final version.

Total of 8h 50mins

I will proobably post this up separately as well. 

This is a camp in East Sussex, mainly for the local astro group, but as numbers have dropped as people move house, I opened it for non members, and I am pleased to say a new SGL member attended and plans to do so next time.

We have been using this campsite for a number of years, it is Bortle 4, but of course you can never rely on the weather and it was REALLY windy for the first two days, so much so it damaged my camping observatory, and some of the other imagers could not image at all when the wind was bad, however this died down later in the week, but overall we only got 1 full clear night and 2 half nights.

Having completely miscalculated the size of one of the images I wanted to do, I went for a much smaller cluster NGC7129 which has been on my list for some time.

Dual Rig, ED80/Atik460EX & ~ED72/ATik460EX on HEQ5
Lum 27 x 600
RGB 40 x 150 binnedx2

Total imaging time 6 hours 10m

Very low but have to take what I can get when I go to Camps for darker skies in galaxy season.

This is the full image:

and this is a Crop to get in closer to the main feature:

It will be badly LP but give you time to find your feet.   If you don’t mind a drive my local astro group meets up in Otford for observing once a month.   Plus some of us go camping in Bortle 4 skies in East Sussex a couple of times a year.

Carole