First forays into real astrophotography

[cathalferris]

I recently got a Canon 600D camera with the standard 18-55 IS II kit lens, and I've started to play around with it a bit. Earlier this evening I went out with the LXD-75 mount and I attached the camera to it. The tripod plate that I have mounts like a dovetail to the mount, which is pretty handy.

I've used Magic Lantern to do the intervalometer stuff - it's great for that.

I aimed the camera at about the head of Taurus, taking 9 1-minute shots at ISO800, 18mm, f5.0. I took 7 darks as well.

On the full-res I can see M1, M35, nebulosity around the Pleiades, hints of the California nebula, and stars down to about 10.5. Click on

the photo and check out the full res.

I'm happy with this one - and IRIS is fantastic for this kind of work, better than the version of MaximDL that I've tried.. The original shots had fleeting cloud and a decent orange glow so I'm impressed by how clean this image is.

Pity my framing was just off - missing the full shape of Orion. I'm goingto get some cheapie 35mm m42 and a "nifty fifty" m42 for these kind of shots in the future, but for a kit lens it's not too bad. A fair bit of coma in the corners, and a reflection of a streetlight flare through eastern Auriga.

[Dark Infinity]

I'm not sure if the link is broken or if it's just me, but the image looks great. There is a lot of detail in there.

[Psychobilly]

Congrats on the image ...

To reduce the coma stop the lens down a couple of stops instead of using it wide open... this will mean longer exposures though...

You could also try the lens correction tools if you have one of the later versions of photoshop

Peter...

[gdheib0430]

Yeah I like thise too you got the focus down pretty darn well I gotta try an 18mm session I find anything @ 35mm above 20 sec exposures start to show star trails.

[cathalferris]

The lens was stopped down from 3.6 to 5.0, but that's obviously not enough to minimise the corner distortion. I'm glad though that I decided to track using the same mount I put my scopes on as I did an experiment the previous night ans I could see clear trails in 15 sec @55mm and 30sec @24 - the pixel density is just too great to work well without tracking as the slightest trail will be picked up.

I figure I need to just get more frames, to even out the sky background a bit, or to take photos away from the lights of Limerick city..

Here's a link to the (large) original:

All sizes | Orion-Taurus-Auriga_Dec16th | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

[Psychobilly]

mine needed to be stopped down more than that as well...

I also looked into balancing the focus between the center and corners have to sacrifice a bit in the center for better edge and corner stars at reasonable apertures...

I don't tend to use the kit lens anymore now though...

[gdheib0430]

Ah I see the tiny bit of distortion from long non tracking exposures now in the big one...pretty much the same boat I am in with my long shots as well...although you do have a bit better focus than I have acheived as of late...well na I did a great set on Cassiopiea the other night...40 X 20' shots at 35mm looked great and sharp, but I had way too much light pollution from the moon. Should get better shots this week gonna go way out into the country with zero light pollution.

[cathalferris]

The distortion is in the lens - the tracking is pretty much spot on for that focal length. The LXD-75 is overkill for a DSLR! I only use it as I have no other tracking mount, and it was easy to affix the camera to the mount.

[Dark Infinity]

Thanks for fixing the link. That looks great. Makes me wish I had a decent star tracking scope.