TomColes

I would really like to say a huge Thankyou to the people above that have helped me. Your help and sharing of knowledge has been invaluable to helping me and my girlfriend to take the image below. yayayayayayay!!!! the image below was taken by my girlfriend with me as an assistant. with your help above we have finally managed to take a deep space shot. The only issue I had was the camera flicked to jpeg when I attached it to my laptop during setup. Not sure why this happened but every days a school day. it was taken using a star tracker pro a tamron 150 - 600mm lens At 600mm f6.3 ISO 1600 for 60sec. 70 stacked images (jpeg) no filters (need to buy some) taken on the outskirts of a busy town. In Buckinghamshire all in all happy but with room to improve. Any tips would be fantastic to improve.

Excuse my ignorance how do you see the phone screen if it’s up against the lens ?? Sorry for the stupid question

So last night I got set up but the cloud put a stop to the fun. But I did manage to learn a bit. I stuck my mobile to the flat surface on the back of a flash I have and opened stellarium . In a very crude way it ment where I pointed the camera I could see the rough direction of the galaxy I was targeting it did help to speed things up. however I did have a break through. I have liked my camera live view to my laptop and can run a split screen one showing what the camera is aiming at and one showing the pc version of stellarium this should greatly improve my ability to match what the camera is seeing and what I am looking for on stellarium. it also makes focusing on stars much easier. Fingers crossed for a clear night so I can try again.

I’ve been trying to find an RDF but can’t seem to find one. Would you mind sharing the link for yours?

So just an update I spent 3 hours last night after polar alignment of my tracker trying to find my target Bodes galaxy. the method I used point the camera in its rough direction. With my lens a 55-300mm zoom right out. Took a photo spent ages try to work out what I was seeing then move the camera to the direction of the target. This is not easy because I had to realise the clutch move the arm (. A guess then adjust the left and right then try again with another picture) after doing this for three hours i found a galaxy not totally sure which one and the the camera battery ran out. at this point I wanted to throw the tracker as far as I possibly could. is there anything I can do to make my life easier. Eg. A small sighting scope that would fit to the hot shoe of the camera so I can point the camera with a bit of a more accuracy.

Thanks for your replies my Nikon lens goes down to F5.6 fully zoomed at 300. Once I find the object, would you suggest iso 1600 and 2-3 mins? Is this current lens going to be sufficient or would you recommend a lens with a lower f-stop??

Hello all and thankyou for allowing me to join my main reason for joining it’s to improve my Astro photography with the help of all the kind people on here. i am in need of a little help I am trying to take some deep space photos I have a star adventure pro a Nikon d7500 and various lenses. i have been able to get lovely pin sharp photos of the stars using my Nikon 55-300. Set at ISO 100 f. And a 2min exposure. However this is not producing the deep space photos I am searching for. i have tried my 150-600 tamron lens for deep space but I keep getting a very strange star trail when doing this and therefore writing the images off as useless. setting used fully zoomed in. ISO 100 f. And even at 30sec it’s still doing it. i have triple checked the polar alignment and the balance of the camera and counter weight. All good. i was photographing the pin wheel galaxy (or trying too) my question is what am I doing wrong? What settings are others using? i found it very difficult to locate the pinwheel galaxy. Is the an easier to locate galaxy that you would suggest ( an easy to find / beginners galaxy )that I can get everything sailed in on and finally start taking some decent images. i intended to take multiple shots then stack them however at the moment with what’s happening that will be a waste of time.