First attempt - M42

[mrjolly]

Finally got out for a couple of hours and had a play around with my new mount and scope! Aside from the few minor niggles below, had no major disasters and decided to try my luck and get a picture or two of Orion. All in all, for a first attempt I'm really happy with the result for a first attempt! Not had a play around with it in Paintshop or anything yet though.

The issues I had were:

Despite aligning my polarscope against a TV aerial a few houses away, it was still pretty out when I got Polaris in it and tried aiming the reticule, adjusting the latitude bolts shifted it slightly to the side.

3 star alignment - first attempt slewed the scope to a star below the roofline to the north, just accepted as okay and tried my best with the last two. Must also try harder to learn the names of some of the stars as it wasn't really obvious which one to go for. Didn't help that despite my best efforts to align the finderscope against a distant aerial, it didn't match the view in the eyepiece very closely. Don't think the full moon helped much either as it was pretty bright! All in all, my alignment was a bit off

Must get something to sit on.

Focusing took way too long - must get a Bahtinov mask!

Apart from that, can't wait for the next clear night (with no full moon) to have another go!

This is a crop from a single 18s frame taken at Iso400 (will remember to set Iso800 next time) with an EOS 350d.

[Steve 1962]

I'm really happy with the result

..and so you should be - well done - that's a great first light especially given the moon light.

When I started off, I made a Hartzmann mask for focusing - it worked pretty well and all it cost was a cereal box!

http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/FOCUS/METHODS.HTM

I used two triangular holes rather than circular and rotated the two triangle 90 degrees to each other.

Looking forward to seeing more from you in future!

Steve

[Jannis]

Very nice pic. Especially concideing the conditions with the full moon and all. Much better then my first images ever was!

It's a real nightmate to image with the full moon up indeed.

Oh, and alignment stars behind houses and trees - you're not alone on that one, haha!

A good start is to use stellarium and look for the stars. Just push F3 to search, and you'll easily see if the star is in a location where it would be possible for you to locate it.