M39

[greencat]

OK, not quite in same league as some of yours but here goes.

Linked my Canon Powershot A80 to rear of ETX70 and did quick 1 star align with Deneb through bedroom window. Straight to M39 with goto. Took about 50 shots, 5 secs seemed to give less trailing. Tried stacking in registax but couldn't get the hang of it. Got a better result editing 1 photo in photoshop. Did comparison using starry night and here they are. The dimmest star I have compared is mag 9.85.

[CELESCOPE]

nice image to start Greencat, yes you can get away with just one frame for open star clusters i only use one but you could go to 15 secs for that without trailing , i can go 30 secs on mine not a prob, globulars need stacking to get the best results , registax is easy to get to grips with , when i started out i used this turorial

http://www.threebuttes.com/RegistaxTutorial.htm

hope thats helps

Rog

[greencat]

Cheers for that link, will check it out.

When you say 30" without trailing, do you mean camera only or thru scope?

I can only do 15" with the A80 and not realy notice trails till magnifying the image. Thought it may have been ETX alt/az not tracking good enough.

[CELESCOPE]

well i have done both greencat , one piggy backing my camera on top of the scope that i done for 0ver 30 sec and all others are done through the scope, the wider the field its less noticeable, but once again it does depend on the scopes drives , they vary so much , hence what we pay , its a tough ole game this , if you want to just do wide field long exposures, with a camera then i guess its best to have an EQ setup , but if you need to go like myself deep sky imaging u can get away with alt-az as long as you have the software to auto align the stars,it does depend how far you want to go with the hobby really.

Rog

[FLO]

Thanks for sharing GC

It looked a bit dark on my screen so I lightened it, otherwise its unchanged:

Steve