Andromeda Galaxy wider view at 190mm FL

[Steve Ward]

Just off to bed last night at 11 ( cloudy at 1/4 to ) when a last glance outside revealed clear sky ...

Logic dictated bed after an all-night session the night before . . . . Yeah right . . !

Outside set-up and shooting by 00:15 . .1st proper sub at 00:36 , last frame at 04:55. . .

Had the EF 75-300 lens on the 1000D , set at 190mm / f5 , mounted directly on the HEQ5ProSynScan.

Mount behaved perfectly , in 5 hours the actual overall drift was just 5mm on full screen !

Shot a selection of exposures over the night and lost a few to planes ,satellites and dew , despite a very good dewshield I lost over half an hour to dew by taking my eye off the ball , soon cured with the hairdrier though.

Thanks to ollypenrice's comments I pushed things a little further than I'm used to . . .

In the final stack are 50 x 150s , 20 x 180s , 10 x 240s , 5 x 300s and 2 x 420s , all at ISO 800 .........ALL UNGUIDED................

Dawn broke to finish the session and after shooting darks I retired for a couple of hours before my solar shoot . . . .

Enough waffle , here's the result . . .

Canon 1000D + EF 75-300 lens @ 190mm /f5 , 50 x 150s , 20 x 180s , 10 x 240s , 5 x 300s , 2 x 420s , all at ISO 800. + Darks various to match lights.

Stacked and tweaked in DeepSkyStacker only.

Steve,

NOW I'm off for a kip . . .

[Black Knight]

Very good. I'm planning on trying something like this soon as well

[Steve Ward]

PS ,

It can be zoomed in on by clicking on the picture I've just realised . .

Steve.

[Gina]

Great image

[SJJ]

Some good detail in there, dust lanes looking good.

[jimjam11]

Its amazing what can be achieved with a modest lens on a decent mount...

[Daniel-K]

seriously unguided how did you PA?

[Mr Spock]

That's a great image. Nice and sharp with lots of detail. Colour is a bit off though and needs a tweak

[allcart]

How crucial is the initial polar alignment when you use the synscan. Do you do a rough polar alignment before doing the star align routine, then use the synscan to get accurate polar alignment, or do you do an accurate polar align before using the synscan for star alignment.

[Steve Ward]

The Polar Alignment is vital for long unguided subs , I have aligned the mount using drift-alignment to be good for 4 minute unguided shots.

The more accurate the PA then the closer you'll be to getting the first star centralised for the Synscan side of things ( along with accurate location and time inputs) but the PA can be relatively way-off and not affect the Go-To performance as the two are not really related , once the handset knows where it is and the time and date it'll just go where it's told/asked.

My mount is set on 3 fixed points in the garden and is just carefully placed at the beginning of set-up , I then just switch on and enter the time/date and then just do a quick 2 star align to make sure nothings moved from the previous session , the alignment stars are now always in the central section of the 9-square grid in Liveview.

For the 2nd star I always pick the brightest named star near the nights target , when it's been tweaked into the centre of the chip I use it to focus on ( with a Baht mask)

I haven't looked through the polarscope for about 6 months since the drift alignment as I know that when the tripod feet are in their "sockets" the mount is polar aligned.

It's as near to a permanent pier set-up as I can get without the hassle of digging holes and without the worry of leaving expensive kit outside unattended

And I did the drift aligning with the 1000D Liveview screen and "Al's Reticle" , much easier than using an illuminated Reticle E/P.

I'm hoping that with already getting 4 mins unguided , when I get the Synguider hooked up the sub times should be virtually limitless . . .!

Steve.

[allcart]

And I did the drift aligning with the 1000D Liveview screen and "Al's Reticle" , much easier than using an illuminated Reticle E/P.

I'm hoping that with already getting 4 mins unguided , when I get the Synguider hooked up the sub times should be virtually limitless . . .!

Steve.

Whats 'Al's reticle?

[Steve Ward]

Hi Allan ,

It's a reticle overlay that you can position over your Liveview image, does the same thing as an illuminated reticle eyepiece but it's on the laptop screen which saves all the to-ing and fro-ing to the eyepiece when drift aligning.

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/files.html

Steve.

[allcart]

Smashin, I downloaded it.

What prog do you use to view the liveview image on your laptop. I have used the canon utilities software but is there an easier way?

[Steve Ward]

I just use EOS Utilities , tried BYEOS but found it a little unpredictable , have also got APT but haven't tried it yet.

[allcart]

Yes EOS utilities seems to work fine, Al.s reticule is a neat little gizmo. Thanks for the link Steve.

I'm trying to work out the Nexstar controller system and star alignment as we speak. (damned coold out there). I seem to have a prob with the precise goto function. It selects the nearest bright star as a starting point (Mirach) and askes you to centre it with the control buttons, but pressing the control buttons does nothing. So I just pressed enter and started taking a few subs to see how accurate it is. I'll see in about an hour. I think it may be a bit off target, but I'll try it all again later on.

[allcart]

Does the sidereal tracking start automatically, as i could find no start button.

[Russe]

Alignmaster is an excellent tool for polar alignment if you are EQMOD trained. For 14£ it's very cheap for what it achieves.

[allcart]

Cheers Russe, I'll check it out.

[swaylight]

andromeda never stops amazing me, every pic that is taken, is breath-taking to me, yours is amazing, can only imagine what it looked like through the actual scope. keep up the great work

[tich]

That's a great image & being unguided too, think I've managed about 3 minutes before I got some trailing although I've still much to learn. Where I have my scope doesn't help as it's on the lawn as I have no patio living in a flat. I have put pegs in the ground to mark where the feet go & I just use the polarscope to align it as I just can't get my head round drift alignment. The images I've produced aren't great maybe I need more data? I do know my processing skills are poor which doesn't help either. Still it wont put me off I'll keep at it until I'm able to get something.

[andyo]

Very nice image Steve,good detail showing the dust lanes colour looks a little on the Magenta side maybe needs a little tweak..Really good tracking unguided.I use alignmaster which is a nice bit of software for polar aligning.