My First Astro picture

[Ewan]

Hi,

As the sky was clear tonight i thought i'd try a few pics without my C8 & just use the Fuji S5500 on my Celestron Bino tripod.

Although Venus was visible it is too bright for my megre skills & camera to get a descent shot, i am not very knowledgable regarding the photography side but i am learning with practice.

I decided to photograph The Plough as it was almost on the meridian & clear.

I set the camera to to manual on the dial, 15 sec exposure @ F 2.9 (manually), WB to daylight (recommended on the net), no zoom, ISO 400.

I got what i thought was a fairly good 1st shot & adjusted brightness, contrast, hue & saturation & this turned the Plough stars blue & other stars green (because of stars magnitude ?).

You can see my camera settings in the picture (may have to zoom in) how can i improve my pictures ? i appreciate my camera is not the best but it's what we have at the moment (i intend to buy a Cannon 50D or 60D & also use my scope)

I also shot Mars but the exposure of 15 secs was way too long & i got a 'stetched' image of Mars, what would the ideal exposure time be for Mars, 3 secs ? ISO setting ?

Can someone advise me for some good settings to try for Venus ie Exposure,ISO,F,WB,Zoom ? as at the moment i tend to get a very bright round image with lots of 'light points' coming off the image (not worth showing tbh )

I was thinking if i can improve my photography just using the Fuji on it's own i may find things easier to grasp once it's scope mounted.

I read on here that there is a Digi-T Adapter which is 46mm thread which i presume goes on the camera lens thread but then what do i need to connect this to my C8 as i am dying to take pics using this method if possible, at the moment i have a Badder Digiscope mount which seems best on my big 2" Diagonal & 38mm WA (the extra weight means i also need an extra counter weight as well now as it unbalances the setup with it all connected).

I would appreciate some guidance from you all as i really enjoy this (as you can see by the time) & cloudless nights these days are far & few.

I know there are a lot of questions for a beginner but in my past life i was a sponge

All the best & clear skies to all

[Double Kick Drum]

Not sure if the colour relates to the star's magnitude. I am not an Astrophotographer (yet) but that doesn't sound right to me.

Congrats on the first shot in any case!