Desert Imaging with the SDAA (200mm f2.8, stock 60D)

[thenews24]

Hanging out in the desert last night with the club. Due to significant errors on my GM-8 worm gear, have been inclined to tackle some widefield with the Cannon 200mm f2.8 on my stock 60D, and some even wider shots with the 18-55mm zoom lens.

Seeing wasn't superb, but it was dry and cool all night.

Here's a pic of the clubs public pads:

As the Sun set, it looked like it was going to be a great night:

The first time I used this lens (200mm f2.8) I stopped it down to f/4, but with your guys's advice I left it wide open. I never really got a perfect focus, but I'm new to this and was happy with the results.

Spent a coupke hours helping out some other member with their gear, then around 1:00am targeted M8 and M20. I really had no idea what setting would be best but tried 60 seconds, 1250 iso. This was roughly 20 minutes total. DSS then CS5:

I'm really not sure where I am here, but was trying to find IC1396, 24 X 120 sec, 1600 iso:

And of course before Sunrise, had to get some Milky Way shots. This was with the standard 18-55mm lens, at 18mm. 3 panel, each 200 sec 800 iso:

So all and all happy with the camera and lens performance, especially for starting off. Modding is out of the question so stuck with what I got. But with some work on proper data capture, tracking, and processing, I think I could really get into widefield dslr imaging.

[Gonzo]

0 light pollution.... a dream...

Nice pictures.

[WaveSoarer]

Beautiful images.

[jambouk]

Absolutely amazing!

Who needs a telescope.

James

[baggywrinkle]

Very very nice....

[thenews24]

Thanks. Here's a cropped image of the galaxies around the Virgo cluster. I think I counted 23:

[Sam]

Those widefields are a real joy to look at, thanks for sharing.

[Psychobilly]

Nice shots,

If your using the "Focus on a Thirds Point" method with the 2.8 wide open then focus will be more critical than it is with the lens stopped down which is why it works best if used with the camera tethered to a computer that's running FWHM based AF.. I use APT running on a Samsung NC10 Netbook...

Peter...

[Daniel-K]

super images

[laser_jock99]

Nice set of photos.

[AndyUK]

What a superb location... and a great set of images too!

I'm really not sure where I am here, but was trying to find IC1396, 24 X 120 sec, 1600 iso

What you have there is the North American and Pelican Nebulae, but that's an amazing FoV you have with that lens - You must be very pleased with it

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Great images. I counted more than 23 in that crop of Virgo. Maybe I can run that through some new code we are developing for automatic scanning of large data sets (think all of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and upwards), and see how many we can find.

[Matthew]

Very nice,your lucky to have such a good location to observe and image from,thanks for sharing your images

[robbie c]

Very nice,your lucky to have such a good location to observe and image from,thanks for sharing your images

I second that fantastic location and some great images

[bm1980]

Very nice

Regards

Ben