Venus & Pleiades 11 April

[moondog]

Shot of Venus & Pleiades tonight - 9-45pm BST

14 Lights, 5 secs @ 800 ISO, Canon 350D with 90 - 300mm telephoto @ 135mm F 6.3

14 darks and 1 Bias frame. Processed in ImagesPlus.

Click to enlarge

MD

[geppetto]

Wonderful

Pleased to see it, couldn't fit both in my FOV

[Kai]

Now thats nice MD

[Greg]

Yip...Nicely done MD.

Greg

[Trevor]

Just tag my picture from last night need to work on the processing side,

2X6 seconds @ ISO 1600 Nikon D80 300mm lens.

[moondog]

Nice image Trevor, looks like you had less haze around Venus than I found.

Did you use a driven mount, as you managed 6 secs with a 300mm lens?. My 135mm focal length lens was on a standard (non driven) photo tripod and I got trailing over 5 secs.

8)

MD

[Trevor]

Hi MD

I just had the camera on a standard tripod, will try again tonight on the HEQ5, had the lens at 300mm that’s about the equivalent of 450mm on 35mm SLR I think.

Yours must have been about 200mm equivalent, cant notice very much trailing in your pic.

[moondog]

Trevor, that's why you had small amount of trailing then.

On the Celestial Equator the trailing is at its worst. Somewhere I have a guide as to what trailing you're likely to get with a fixed tripod and different DSLR lenses. I took several test shots and zoomed into them on the LCD screen. I got slight trailing at 6 secs and backed off to 5 secs and I could see no trailing. The stars were round but as I say, Venus showed a slight haze.

MD