First ever astrophoto

[Dave_D]

Sword handle in Perseus.

Comments/advice would be appreciated

1 of 15 20 second exposures, most didnt turn out because of cloud so i cant try stacking. Had to modify my GX250 by moving the primary cell about an inch to get focus. Camera is EOS 1100D

[iksose7]

Thats great Dave   I'd be happy if that was my first!

[wxsatuser]

Good start.

[Pete Presland]

great start, looks like pretty good image of the double cluster to me.

[poogle]

Great first image, you should be proud!

Next step is to get focus spot on. A Bahtinov mask will help with this, you could make one yourself or buy one for a few quids.

/Patrik

[Dave_D]

Great first image, you should be proud!

Next step is to get focus spot on. A Bahtinov mask will help with this, you could make one yourself or buy one for a few quids.

/Patrik

Yeah focusing is an issue at the moment as i'm still getting the hang of live view and i managed to break the otg ataptor for my tablet so i was basically stumbling around in the dark figuring stuff out on the fly . tbh tho i was seriously impatient to try a pic out and only let the scope stand for about 5 minutes before i started lol so it was nowhere near thermally stable, not to mention the cluster was literally just poking out over the top of my house. hardly ideal but i think i did ok for a first attempt.

[wxsatuser]

Great first image, you should be proud!

Next step is to get focus spot on. A Bahtinov mask will help with this, you could make one yourself or buy one for a few quids.

/Patrik

Yes the Bahtinov makes it a doddle with live view, just zoom in and get the centre line in the middle.

[Gib007]

Your first astrophoto looks great, congratulations.

Indeed, a friend of mine bought an electronic autofocuser and it not only takes ages to focus, but it cost him £100 and requires power. In comes the Bahtinov mask - dirt cheap, extremely light, requires no power and focuses perfectly in under a minute. Why waste time and money?

[Dave_D]

I'm wondering.... i see lots of great photos here and heaps of good advice but does anyone know sites that show what can go wrong? take for example a segment of the raw file of the pic i took. What exactly am i seeing in the image in regard to the flair on each star? Does anyone know of a site that shows all the possible distortions using real images and what the best means of correcting them is?

[poogle]

That phenomenon is called coma. It can be corrected using a coma corrector.

Another newtonian distortion (some like it some don't) is diffraction spikes.

/Patrik

[Redshift48]

Great first effort. Focus is definitely critical and will help many of the problems. Also, most of the experienced imagers will stress that one of the keys to a good image is good tracking with a good mount (doesn't need to be expensive) and good polar alignment.

Robert

[Dave_D]

That phenomenon is called coma. It can be corrected using a coma corrector.

Another newtonian distortion (some like it some don't) is diffraction spikes.

/Patrik

yeah, not too bothered about diffraction spikes, they look 'star-like' lol. as to coma correctors, i was looking at either a baader multi purpose corrector (MPCC) or a Vixen coma corrector for R200SS only problem i have is that the EOS t-adaptor will have to connect directly to the corrector as i don't have much inward travel from the existing focus and i don't know if either of thse allow that (until the people at astronomy centre e-mail me)

[carastro]

I have a coma corrector, a 200PDS and have used a DSLR, I did have to get a different T ring to the one I was using with my M48 spacers, as I think the thread is T2 on the coma corrector, but the spacing is OK with a PDS but not quite sure which scope you have.  sure I read it somewhere but now can't find it. 

Not sure if this helps.

Carole