ETX125 Beginning Astrophotography(With Stacking)

[ahanmal]

Hi,

I currently have a Meade ETX125, Canon Rebel T1i, various adapters, and a Starry Night Bluestar adapter. I have taken simple long exposure images before of the Moon, Planets, Sun, etc, but want to start taking long-exposure images that need to be stacked. I own a Mac, and was wondering what software I need to start. I currently use Equinox to control my scope. Is it possible to use Nebulosity to its full potential with only one camera? Are there any other good free alternatives to Nebulosity? Can I use PHD Guider and Nebulosity with one camera?

Thanks,

ahanmal

[Black Knight]

If you mean can you image and guide with the same camera, at the same time, then unfortunately the answer is no. As as far as Mac-based stacking software is concerned, I'm sorry I can't help on that one.

[ahanmal]

If you mean can you image and guide with the same camera, at the same time, then unfortunately the answer is no. As as far as Mac-based stacking software is concerned, I'm sorry I can't help on that one.

Is autoguiding necessary?

[Black Knight]

Is autoguiding necessary?

For DSO imaging with exposures longer than a minute or two I'd say it is. It all depends really on how good your EQ mount is polar aligned. The better the polar alignment, the longer your subs can be before star trailing becomes an issue. If you are using a Meade 125 on the standard Meade AltAz fork mount, then you'll get problems with field rotation as well. For long exposure DSO imaging you need a stable driven EQ mount.

[ahanmal]

Thank you for your responses. Are there any alternatives to autoguding? Such as piggybacking another camera, and following that one?

[atmenterprises]

That's what auto guiding is - another camera that is trained on a star that is separate from your imaging camera. Usually it's a web cam or something along those lines.

[Capricorn]

The ETX is not applicable for long exposure photography - the mount is Alt/Az and you need an equitorial mount.

The scope is a Mak or SCT again not applicable to long exposure, the long focal length magnifies any tracking inaccuracy, you need something short. The long focal length also means a dim image so even longer exposure times.

The camera is a DSLR and the ETX was never intended to have one of these hung off of it, the weight imbalance can cause problems.

[stem1989]

I use a mac, and in the end I just cracked into bootcamp as mac software is very limited when it comes to the freeware thats readily available, I like registax & deepskystacker which are unavailable for mac, there are alternatives but I just use my windows partition on my mac to process everything then put it through photoshop on my mac osx partition. If your dead against installing windows there is Keith's image stacker which is free and does the same things as registax. PHD is available on Mac OS X also I think.