BigPaddy

6 hours ago, tooth_dr said:

Agreed - that’s super! One of my friends follows you Instagram and I recognised the style.  You do a lot of MIlky Way shooting and beautiful nightscapes. What camera and lens were you using for this one?

 

Thank you so much ! It was A7rIII and 16-35mm

This august monument, several hundred yards from the mansion house, was erected for the Earl Bishop between 1779-83. It was built in memory of his lordship's elder brother George, 2nd Earl of Bristol, who died a bachelor in 1775. The mausoleum stands between the Lion's Gate and the Bishop's Gate. The monument was crowned with a domed monopteral tempietto, contained a fine statue of the Earl Bishop's brother, in Roman dress, by John van Nost the younger. Neither the tempietto nor the statue could withstand the storms of 1839, since when the fragments have lain around the base of the now stunted monument, awaiting restoration.

It took me some time to complete this photograph. It's my first Milky Way image shot at 35mm. The sky was shot separately and was tracked and stacked. My plan for the foreground was to illuminate it using light painting with a drone technique but the wind was so strong I just shot it as is. Illuminated by light pollution from Coleraine, as I was facing Limavady direction it worked quite well.

Some technical details:
Sky: Tracked - 5 Exposures 180s long at 35mm | f4 | ISO 800 | 25 Flats | 6 Darks | No Bias
Stacked in DSS and edited in PS

Foreground: 10 Exposures 30s long at 35mm | f2.8 | ISO 200 stacked in PS to reduced noise.

1 hour ago, vlaiv said:

That will be ok. You'll need a computer/laptop with guiding software like PHD2 that will control everything.

Im happy with laptop as I need it for focusing anyway ( as for now )

Thank you so much !

I've done some quick reaserch and it looks I need:

ZWO ASI 120MC-S USB 3.0 + ZWO Mini Guide Scope 30mm f4

That should solve the issues I was having.

Correct me if Im wrong of course

40 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Guiding should solve that.

Its also not smooth, sometimes looks like dot and line and sometimes like 3 dots ( very jerky and non consistent ).

I will try to look for some guiding scopes and how dificult it is to make it work.

9 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Have you examined your images above for direction?

Yes, the rotation occurs around polaris in 90% of my images.

5 hours ago, vlaiv said:

In any case, if you go with resolution below about 5-6"/px you are really in serious astrophotography waters and you want better mount or at least to start auto guiding.

 

So it sounds like I need to look for some guiding scope and software then.

Thank you !

6 minutes ago, Davey-T said:

You can do a test to see if the tracking speed is correct by setting it up indoors with a laser pointer mounted on the dovetail and marking the starting point then leaving it running for a sidereal day, 4 mins less than 24 hours to see if it ends up pointing at the same spot.
 

Thank you so much. So leave it running for same amount of time on 2 different days and compare travel distance ?

Cheers

8 minutes ago, toxic said:

most mounts really unguided to shoot at that F L then you need a guide scope and guide camera.

Thank you so much toxic. Thats probably what I need.

Not only tracking is new for me but now I need a guiding scope to figure it out

Cheers

Hello Everyone !

This is my first post here.

My Name is Patrick and Im and amateur astro photographer but I have over 20 years of experience in the field of photography.  Im fine with wide field astro imaging but I have some problems with a more narrow field of view, or rather with tracking.

I bought my Sky Adventurer few weeks ago and I was using it recently for M31 images.

I can pull out 4 + minutes with wide angle shots. With 600mm on the other hand 30 sek is max I can track without seeing trailing. Last night I was able to get 1m exposure without seeing any massive star trails but taking shots in intervals showed 2 from 8 images were tracked kinda fine, the rest of them shows like the tracker tried but gave up during the process. Thats 80% of bad frames. ( Images attached )

My setup: Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer.

Camera: Sony A7R III

Lens: 200-300G

Other Eq: Wireless trigger on top of camera body.

Overall weight: 2.9kg

I polar aligned it 3 times and balanced it as best I could so there was no pulling when the cluthc was disabled. ( No wind, tripod knocks or other factors )

Is there anything Im doing wrong ? I would like to know some opinion and guidance if possible as Im new to trackers etc.

Thank you so much in advanced

Cheers