shropshire lad

On 28/12/2021 at 13:55, Joebob said:

Nice setup, I need to get one of those lasers, may I ask where you got this one from?

Just from E bay  ...  green laser cost about £10

12 hours ago, Joebob said:

The Zeiss has been my preferred lens, I don't really have any experience to comment on its quality, but it's keeping me happy for now.

How do you find the Skywatcher AZ GTI? I was considering it also, even put some bids in on a second hand one on ebay. I ended up with the SA in the end but wish I had a goto mount, looks really cool.

I find the AZ-GTI really good, but saying that its the only mount I have ever had (being fairly new to AP).... below is a photo of my set up, with the laser light on top for polar alignment.. and my 70-200mm f2.8 lens (buty I mostly use the Sigma 150-600mm now)

I've just been given one of those Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar MC 135mm, f3.5 lenses but the apperture blades are stuck wide open so stripped it and got it working up to f11 .. quite a sharp lens actually.

I don't have a telescope at all ... I use Canon 80D  and a few lenses from 10mm up to 150-600mm along with a Skywatcher AZ-Gti goto mount and tripod .... I really enjoy AP and am still learning along the way.

Hello Joebob and welcome, can you tell us what equipment you have.

Are you going to use the Dslr with a telescope or a camera lens?

Back in January it apparently has travelled 2,500 million miles towards us, so I should get a better image next time I try ..... lol 

I use a canon 80D and stack the Raw files in DSS .. then save as FTS file ... run that file through StarTools  .. plenty of vids on utube.

Says total cloud cover 100% ... just been outside and it's dead clear.

.

Thanks for your reply almcl , you must be close to me, I live half a mile from Madeley Court.

I have a 150-600mm zoom lens on my Canon Dslr, my question is do I fit the mask on with the lens hood in place or just onto the end of the lens, or does it even matter??

Adam1234 can I ask what was your exposure time (shutter speed) and iso please?

53 minutes ago, Ohgodwherediditgo said:

The camera was set to Bulb for use with nina. I'm not sure if nina automatically changes that.

 

Edit: I should also mention that i had never picked up a DSLR before buying this one to point at the sky.

Bulb will be the exposure time .... aperture will be set on your camera .. e.g f5.6 ... f8 ... etc. .. oh I may be wrong as you are not using a lens are you.

and what was your aperture settings

Can you tell us your camera settings ...

Hi Bob and welcome from another Dslr/Lens astro photographer, and not far from you in Shropshire.

I'm also a Mach Loop visitor.

Paul Lewis Photography - HOME (weebly.com)

Thank you AstroMuni I will give that link a look.

25 minutes ago, AstroMuni said:

Thats a good suggestion. BTW, you dont need a guide scope. This can be done with the main scope itself.

But I don't have a scope, just a Dslr and 500mm lens.

8 hours ago, ONIKKINEN said:

Technically yes, but in reality would not be very accurate. You will have significant cone error (camera not perfectly in line with RA-axis) in pretty much every setup. There is no easy way to polar align without either a polarscope or the use of polar alignment software like Sharpcap pro. Sharpcap pro and others need a dedicated astro cam to work though, don't know what camera you're working with.

 

You can try to put Polaris in the position as noted in the app, but you will have no real way to tell how far it is in your camera screen, or if its supposed to be inverted or not (you need to experiment on this). Polar scopes work well because every polarscope has etched lines in the eyepiece to show where the circle of Polaris's travel is, which looks exactly like the polar alignment app you use.

 

I also found this: https://www.cloudynights.com/articles/cat/articles/darv-drift-alignment-by-robert-vice-r2760. This method looks time consuming and annoying but should work if you spend some time on this.

Thank you for the reply, I will take a look at that link.

2 hours ago, ONIKKINEN said:

You will need a mount that has a polar scope fitted in it to use this method of polar aligning. This view doesn't really translate at all into a camera view inverted or not.

What is the camera and lens mounted on?

Skywatcher AZ-GTi and wedge ..... running SynScan Pro to guide it.

Now this is what I was thinking, may be wrong ?!.

Put Polaris in centre of live view, then using the PolarisView position in above App image as an example .... adjust the mount so that the star would move left and down a touch ( approx the diam of the full moon) and the true celestial pole would now be in the centre where my imaginary red cross would be.

Sorry I need to explain a little futher.

I dont have a polar scope, just a Dslr and lens.

This is the view from the App, stating View as in Polar finder scope. .. 

So is this the way I would position it in my camera (live screen) or is this the inverted view.

TIA

Probably a daft question ... I have Polaris View on my phone and am unsure about how to read what it is telling me ... 

It states "View as in Polar Finder scope" so is this upside down to me eyes view or does a Finder scope show it the correct way up??

Thanks in Advance.

Very impressive ..... was the original image cropped much?

22 hours ago, AstroNebulee said:

Great capture there, really nice detail. What scope were you using? I was going to try this last night but went for the whale and hockey stick galaxies, 2 for the price of one in 1 frame, clear skies 

Thanks for your reply

No scope ... Just my Canon 80D Slr camera and Sigma 150-600mm zoom lens set at 500mm, but on a cropped body camera that gave me equivalent focal length of  800mm.

How do I find out about these zoom calls?

Still quite new to all this astro stuff, found the conditions quite a challenge last night.

Moon close by and poor light poloution.
160 X 25 second images
Iso 400, f 6.3 @ 500mm Canon 80D

AZ-GTI in Eq mode
Stacked in DSS and processed in photoshop.

Your CC very welcome.