Finally Clear Skies

[Langy]

Finally tonight we got some clear skies. It wasn't until about 22:00 and I thought it wasn't going to happen.

So I finally got setup properly, leveled out tripod, fixed on mount to point north and adjusted scope to point to polaris.

Had a the usual viewing of Jupiter and the MD was running a treat.

I wanted to try and push some images piggy backing the scope so I stuck on my EOS 300D with 300mm lens and due to the brightness of the moon had to point toward the plough.

With the scope pointing towards Mizar I set the camera to 5 second exposures which is well above the recommended 1.25 seconds on the 600 rule (yes I know that I'm close to Polaris so the movement will be far less   ). Think there were just over 60 images taken with checking every now and then. Stacked them is DSS and got the image below.

This was a test with piggy backing for the first time and see how the MD works. Quite please with the result, I can't see any sign of trailing.

[adavies8900]

Nice man awesome story had a clear sky for a good hour was well happy, Seen a satellite flying by and followed it for a second or two your picture is awesome. I am just looking on where to start with astrophotography. Any tips

[Pete Presland]

thats a ery nice 1st image, its not something you see imaged that often well done!

[Langy]

Nice man awesome story had a clear sky for a good hour was well happy, Seen a satellite flying by and followed it for a second or two your picture is awesome. I am just looking on where to start with astrophotography. Any tips

Not knowing what equipment you have is a bit hard. 

However I have found that unless you have a really good setup (well above my price range ) then for anything other than lunar and planetary images you need to stick clear of trying to take images through the actual telescope.

If you have a DSLR or even a compact where you can control the exposure time and focus is the minimal, if you can control ISO and aperture all the better. It doesn't matter what length of lens you have but the image I took is on a 300mm which it was very slightly cropped to remove the edges and that image covers 4.21 x 2.77 deg of the sky. If you are unsure as to how much that is either take a look in Stellarium (free software you can download a must for this hobby) or download the A Set of star maps here http://www.uv.es/jrtorres/triatlas.html. I've downloaded and laminated all these for later use. When using as camera with no tracking it's best to observe the 600 rule so you have a rough idea of maximum exposure times.

Certainly ask any questions.

[Langy]

thats a ery nice 1st image, its not something you see imaged that often well done!

Thanks Pete, it was a case of what do I point at with the moon light being so strong. I like it as it has shown so many stars you can't normally see, I'd be interested to know the lowest mag of star in the image just as a guide to see how much I can capture.